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COLLYER, ROBERT (1823— )

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Originally appearing in Volume V06, Page 694 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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COLLYER, See also:ROBERT (1823— ) , See also:American Unitarian See also:clergy-See also:man, was See also:born in See also:Keighley, See also:Yorkshire, See also:England, on the 8th of See also:December 1823. At the See also:age of eight he was compelled to leave school and support himself by See also:work in a See also:linen factory. He was naturally studious, however, and supplemented his scant schooling by See also:night study. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and for several years worked at this See also:trade at See also:Ilkley. In 1849 he became a See also:local Methodist See also:minister, and in the following See also:year emigrated to the See also:United States, where he obtained employment as a See also:hammer maker at Shoemakersville, See also:Pennsylvania. Here he soon began to preach on Sundays while still employed in the factory on See also:week-days. His See also:earnest, rugged, See also:simple See also:style of See also:oratory made him extremely popular, and at once secured for him a wide reputation. His advocacy of See also:anti-See also:slavery principles, then frowned upon by the Methodist authorities, aroused opposition, and eventually resulted in his trial for See also:heresy and the revocation of his See also:licence. He continued, however, as an ' See also:Michel See also:Gerard was a popular See also:Breton See also:peasant See also:deputy (see See also:JACOBINS). 694 to contribute to See also:Household Words, where After Dark (1856) and The Dead See also:Secret (1857) ran serially. His See also:great success was achieved in 186o with the publication of The Woman in See also:White, which was first printed in All the Year See also:Round. From that See also:time he enjoyed as much popularity as any novelist of his See also:day, No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The See also:Moonstone, a See also:capital detective See also:story (1868), being among his most successful books.

After The New Magdalen (1873) his ingenuity became gradually exhausted, and his later stories were little more than faint echoes of earlier successes. He died in Wimpole See also:

Street, See also:London, on the 23rd of See also:September 1889. See also:Collins's See also:gift was of the melodramatic See also:order, and while many of his stories made excellent plays, several of them were actually reconstructed from pieces designed originally for See also:stage See also:production. But if his See also:colours were occasionally crude and his methods violent, he was at least a See also:master of situation and effect. His See also:trick of telling a story through the mouths of different characters is sometimes irritatingly disconnected; but it had the merit of giving an See also:air of actual See also:evidence and reality to the elucidation of a See also:mystery. He possessed in the highest degree the gift of absorbing See also:interest; the turns and complexities of his plots are surprisingly ingenious, and many of his characters are not only real, but uncommon. See also:Count Fosco in The Woman in White is perhaps his masterpiece; the See also:character has been imitated again and again, but no See also:imitation has ever attained to the subtlety and See also:humour of the See also:original.

End of Article: COLLYER, ROBERT (1823— )

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COLMAN, GEORGE (1732–1794)

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