Mr. Reuben Wray, a retired actor who has had little public success, flees Stratford-upon-Avon fearing pursuit by the police.

He arrives in Tidbury in the Marsh and sets up shop teaching elocution. Two local villains notice he carries a rather large cash box and attempt to steal the contents. When their plans come to naught and they exact their revenge Mr. Wray is left devastated and it takes Annie, his granddaughter, and her intended, Martin, to rectify the situation. It is Squire Colebatch however, an ex patron of Reubens, who brings the perfect ending to this wonderful Christmas whimsy.

Wilkie Collins was a good friend of Charles Dickens and like that great man he was a radical freethinker with a passion for the rights of the common man and a disdain for Victorian convention. Both men had a love for the theatre and performed Collins’ novel ‘The Frozen Deep’ [also an Assembled Stories title] as a play, once by Royal Command.

The authors’ love of mystery, the works of Shakespeare and his sympathy for the plight of the lower orders come together in this quixotic and very heartwarming tale.

Collection	Narrator	Length
Victorian	Peter Joyce	4 hrs 12 mins

Media	Compact Disc
Media Qty	4
Audio Format	CD-DA
Book Code	VI-131CD
ISBN	978 1 86015 069 2
Price	£13.49

William Wilkie Collins (1824 –1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and writer of short stories. He was hugely popular in his time, and wrote 27 novels, more than 50 short stories, at least 15 plays, and over 100 pieces of non-fiction work. Collins was born in London, the son of a well-known landscape artist, William Collins. At 17 he left school and was apprenticed 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. After his father's death in 1847, Collins produced his first published book, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins. He became a lifelong friend and collaborator of Dickens; several of Collins' novels were serialised in Dickens' weekly publication All the Year Round, and Dickens later edited and published them himself. Collins suffered from a form of arthritis known as 'rheumatic gout' and became severely addicted to the opium that he took (in the form of laudanum) to relieve the pain.

Click here to find out more about Wilkie Collins.

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