Collins, Wilkie, English novelist, son of the succeeding, born in London; tried business, then law, and finally settled to literature; his novel “The Woman in White” was the first to take with the public, and was preceded and succeeded by others which have ensured for him a high place among the writers of fiction (1824‒1889).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Collins, Mortimer * Collins, William