Wilkie Collins on 'Fallen Leaves.'

Evening Star, Issue 8118, 18 January 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

Wilkie Collins on 'Fallen Leaves.'

An American journalist, while editing the 'Canadian Monthly' ten or eleven years since, had the personal friendship of Wilkie Collins. He has just published a letter which he received from the novelist which refers to the story of «The Fallen Leaves,' published in 1879. It has never been published before:—- ! • ■• " London, Thursday, March 13,1879. '•' My dear Stewart, —A line to thank you for the ( Canadian Monthly,' which reaches me regularly, and to say that I enclose three more revises of 'The Fallen L.eayes,.' in advance of the publication here on the 2nd, 9th, and 16th April next. On February 13th I wrote to answer your letter, sending revise to the end of March, and asking for a line in reply to assure me that the business part of my communication was clearly understood between us,

" You will find that the sixteenth weekly part Introduces a new character, belonging to a class which some of my brethren are afraid to touch with the tips of their pens. She is, nevertheless, the chief character in the story, and will probably lead me into another novel in continuation of «The Fallen Leaves.' You will see (especially when you receive the revise of part 17, for April 23) that the character is so handled ftl to give no offence to any sensible persons, and that every line is of importance to the coming development of the girl, placed amid new surroundjngg. But perhaps some of the t pice people with' nasty ideaß \ on your sjde of the pcean may rajse objection. In this case you are entirely at liberty to state, as publicly as yon please (ijf you think it necessary), that my arrangement wjth you stipulates for the absolute literal reprinting of • The Fallen Leaves' from my revises, and that the gentle reader will have the story exactly as I have written it, or will not have the latter portions of the story at all, I don't anticipate any serious objections. On the contrary, I believe ' Simple Sally' will be the most lovable personage in the story. But we have (as Mr Carlyle reckons it) thirty millions of fools in Great Britain and Ireland and (who knows ?) some of them may have emigrated ! " I intended to write a short letter. ' Hell is paved ' ; you know the rest.—Yours very truly,.;' / ■ •< , Wilkie Collins." '