This is a timely re-examination of Wilkie Collins’s The Dead Alive. Anna Clark has situated Collins’s novella within its nineteenth-century context in terms of the Boorn murder trial, which inspired its plot, and other contemporary materials, including reviews and illustrations. The introduction provides a clear overview of Collins’s work, as well as of the text under consideration, which makes this volume useful for both scholars and students. This is a welcome and exciting addition to Broadview’s indispensable Victorian literature series.” — Joanne Ella Parsons, Falmouth University
“Wilkie Collins’s The Dead Alive is an incredibly teachable novella, and Anna Clark’s introduction helpfully situates it within a range of historical contexts. This little-known text—advertised as Collins’s ‘first American story’ and based on an actual 1819 Vermont trial—is distinct within Collins’s oeuvre. The bold Naomi Colebrook prefigures Collins’s detective-heroine Valeria Woodville in The Law and the Lady but is also depicted as a uniquely American heroine. The contextual material that Clark provides, including reviews and reports of the real-life trial, position The Dead Alive as a significant experiment in transatlantic, legal, and sensational writing.” — Tara MacDonald, University of Idaho
