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Victorian fiction writer, essayist, and social commentator Wilkie Collins continues to perplex critics and entertain readers. Critics, pointing to his stereotyped characters, melodramatic plots, sometimes unsophisticated approaches to social issues, and repetitious subjects and story lines, hold that his contemporaries Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Meredith, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope eclipse Collins's contributions to British fiction. T.S. Eliot judged him a minor figure who contented himself with artful, albeit melodramatic plots and one whose talent exceeded his genius and artistic reach. Such appraisals, however, ignore Collins's abiding popularity, social protest, and literary innovations. Several of his novels, including The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), have remained in print almost continuously since their first publication, and many of his stories are still anthologized and enjoyed. It is true that he could write cloying sentimental tales at a rapid pace, and in all of his short fiction complexities are resolved, conventional marriages unite appropriate couples, and worthy offspring inherit their just rewards from devoted parents who, to outsiders, seem to be vicious.
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