COLLINS, Wilkie.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Queen of Hearts. First edition, attractively bound by Riviere. Collecting detective and supernatural stories, the work includes "The Biter Bit", described by Ellery Queen as introducing comedy to detective fiction, and "Anne Rodway", an early example of a woman detective in fiction.The supernatural stories, of which "Mad Mankton" is the most horrific, "reveal Collins's technique of grounding his horrors in fact, and domesticating the old ghost-in-a-bedsheet into realistic characters, and the supernatural, or apparently supernatural, elements into everyday phenomena" (Tymn).

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