No Name (Penguin Classics)

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In his own preface to NO NAME, Wilkie Collins acknowledged that while he wanted to use the success he had achieved with his first ground-breaking "sensation novel", THE WOMAN IN WHITE, he also wanted to push his story-telling into new divergent directions. Here, she’s merely a plot vehicle – pitiable but irritating when she’s on the page, and forgotten when she’s not required. This is a good book with an attention-getting suspenseful drama, not as good as his “Moonstone” and “Lady in White,” or even “The Hunted Hotel,” all of which are superb dramas that begin with unusual episodes, but it is still good and an enjoyment to read. I can see how this one might not appeal to you, especially if the ‘feature’ characters don’t appeal and don’t feel well rounded to you.

No Name (1862) was the follow-up to Wilkie Collins’ big success with The Woman in White (1860) which established him as a best-selling author specialising in the ‘sensation novel’.Their parents were unmarried at the time of their birth and as such, in the eyes of law, they are illegitimate children; in other words, they are nobody’s children and have “no-name”.

Norah and Magdalen are the daughters of Andrew Vanstone, who is the owner of a country estate in Coombe-Raven, Somerset. She becomes a worthy and devious woman to a quite worthy adversary, one Mrs Lecount, a woman one can grow to hate quite easily. They make a verbal agreement on her settlement, and then construct a trick to lure Mrs Lecount away to her brother in Zurich. I’m glad that I’ve begun to correct that oversight with this fun, well-plotted, and highly addictive book. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach.She suffers quite enough to satisfy even the most hard hearted of Victorian readers and I was delighted when she achieved happiness almost by accident at the end of the novel. He has been living with the woman who is mother to the two sisters, but doing so in an unmarried state. Wragge makes enquiries for Magdalen about the inheritance, and when Michael Vanstone dies she turns her attention to his son Noel.

Both these characters were likable in their own way, but Magdalen was the better heroine for me despite all her sins. Typical elements included bigamous marriages, disputed wills, forgery, domestic violence, imprisonment, assumed identity, and madness. From the so different Vanstone Sisters to the sneaky Mr Wraggle or the cunning Mrs Lecount (what a clash of titans! It’s interesting because I’ve usually found that people who like Collins aren’t great enthusiasts for Dickens and vice versa.The book was dramatized as Great Temptation by Collins and Wybert Reeve, who played "Captain Wragge" to great effect. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.