As usual, I had my morning cataloguing up at the Athenaeum, and this morning it was Wilkie Collins, one of my favourite nineteenth century authors.
Strangely, unless it's been misclassified and I'm yet to find it, we don't appear to have a copy of The Woman in White, which is perhaps his best known novel today.
This isn't terribly unusual - the Woman in White was incredibly popular when it first appeared, and it's possible that the book simply wore out and was not replaced. As I've said before the accession registers and other paperwork relating to the early days of the Athenaeum's library have disappeared
The Woman in White made Wilkie Collin's reputation, even inspiring a cartoon by his friend John Leech depicting a housholder, engrossed in his novel being ordered to come to bed by his wife.
What we do have is a second edition of the Moonstone, unfortunately volume three is missing
which was clearly sourced second hand from Mullen's as the books have remnant Mullen's circulating library labels, a copy of Poor Miss Finch that dates from 1872 that was probably bought new by the Athenaeum, copies of his early novels Antonina and Basil that have been professionally rebound, suggesting that they were reasonably popular and even a yellowback edition of Miss or Mrs from the end of the nineteenth century suggesting Wilkie Collins remained popular throughout his lifetime and beyond
Other than that, it was the usual mix of late Victorian and Edwardian adventure novels, interwar mysteries and 1950s romance novels...
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