Basil (1852) - Wilkie Collins

Written by Wilkie Collins
Read by Nicholas Boulton
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

· Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
· Release date: 06-17-22
· Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks

Appearing in 1852, Basil was Wilkie Collins’s second published novel.

The eponymous narrator is emotionally torn between two women: Margaret Sherwin and his sister Clara. His marriage to Margaret, a draper’s sexually precocious daughter, is to remain secret and unconsummated for the first year, as agreed with her father.

Anticipating Collins’s later sensation novels, the plot involves betrayal, insanity and death, with a thrilling conclusion set among the cliffs and whirlpools near Land’s End. The book was received with shock upon its publication, most especially due to its treatment of adultery.

The story depends very heavily on chance and fate to draw these tragedy-bound characters into one another’s spheres. When you have accepted that element, you must concede that anyone would be as foolish and headstrong as Basil over a woman he can’t even say he barely knows (as he does not know her in the least when he decides he is completely in love and must have her and no other). But, Collins handles this deftly and I totally believed the circumstances that ensued after the chance encounter of Basil and Margaret on an omnibus.

Here Basil is read by the prolific and popular narrator Nicholas Boulton.