William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale and No Name.
Collins predicted the deterrence concept of mutually assured destruction that defined the Cold War nuclear era.
Writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he stated, "I begin to believe in only one civilising influence – the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace."

Life
Collins was born in London, the son of a well-known Royal Academician landscape artist, William Collins. Named after his father, he swiftly became known by his second name (which honoured his godfather, David Wilkie).
From the ages of 12 to 15 he lived with his parents in Italy, which made a great impression on him.

At age 17 he left school and was apprenticed as a clerk to a firm of tea merchants, but after five unhappy years, during which he wrote his first novel, Iolani, he entered Lincoln's Inn to study law. (Iolani remained unpublished for over 150 years until 1999.)
After his father's death in 1847, Collins produced his first published book, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A. (1848),

and also considered a career in painting, exhibiting a picture at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1849, but it was with the release of his first published novel, Antonina, in 1850 that his career as a writer began in earnest.
Collins suffered from a form of arthritis known as "rheumatic gout" and became severely addicted to the opium he took (in the form of laudanum) to relieve the pain. As a result, he experienced paranoid delusions , including a conviction that he was constantly accompanied by a subjective doppelgänger he dubbed 'Ghost Wilkie'. His novel The Moonstone prominently features the effects of opium and opium addiction.

Collins met Martha Rudd, a 19-year-old when he visited Yarmouth in 1864. She moved to London in 1867 or 1868 before Caroline Graves issued her ultimatum, either Wilkie married her or she would leave him to marry Joseph Charles Clow.
Caroline and Joseph were married on 29 October 1868, in the parish church of St. Marylebone. Mrs. Graves returned to Collins after two years, and he continued both relationships until his death in 1889.