The Lawyer’s Story of a Stolen Letter by Wilkie Collins

An early attempt at detective fiction by a Victorian novelist

A portrait of Wilkie Collins
by John Everett Millais

The English novelist Wilkie Collins is held in great respect by crime fiction fans as one of the first exponents of the genre.

Although he is chiefly remembered for his sensation literature, of which his 1860 novel The Woman in White is a famous example, he also wrote The Moonstone in 1868, which is often talked of as the first English detective novel, because there is a crime at the heart of the story, a variety of suspects and an early example of a detective in the character of Sergeant Cuff.

Collins became a friend of Charles Dickens and contributed short stories to Household Words, a publication owned and edited by Dickens. He wrote The Lawyer’s Story of a Stolen Letter, originally called The Fourth Poor Traveller, for the Christmas edition of Household Words in 1854.

This is considered a very early attempt at detective fiction by Collins, as it was 14 years before he wrote The Moonstone.

The affair of the stolen letter is related by a lawyer to an artist to pass the time while he is having his portrait painted.

The lawyer, Mr Boxsious, tells the artist that he has not always been comfortable financially, or successful professionally, and that he got his first lucky break when he earned £500 as a reward for retrieving a stolen letter that was being used to try to extort money from a young man of his acquaintance.

The man was about to marry a beautiful young woman when he received a disturbing note in which the sender claimed he had a letter that would implicate the woman’s dead father in an attempted forgery. The sender threatened to pass the letter on to a newspaper unless the man paid him £500.

The lawyer regales the artist with the story of how he outwitted the man who stole the letter, a disreputable clerk who used to work for the woman’s father. By clever detective work the lawyer was able to work out where the letter was hidden and restore it to the daughter of the man who wrote it.

Some see The Moonstone as
the first English detective novel 

In just 35 pages, Collins describes the meeting between the lawyer and the artist, brings up the subject of the lawyer’s opportunity to earn £500 at the start of his career, and sets the stage for him to tell the artist the story of how he executed an elaborate search and surveillance plan to gain access to the blackmailer’s hotel room and steal back the letter.

After a meticulous search, he uses the only clue he has been able to find, a puzzling numerical inscription, and applies it to the pattern of the carpet. This enables him to discover the hiding place of the stolen letter, for which the blackmailer was demanding £500.

The lawyer then thinks of ‘a nice irritating little plan’ and replaces the letter with a piece of paper on which he has written ‘change for a five hundred pound note.’

Wilkie Collins was born on this day - 8 January - in 1824 in London. He entered Lincoln’s Inn to study Law and was called to the Bar, but he never practised as a lawyer, preferring to write for a living instead.

His first contribution to Household Words was the story, A Terribly Strange Bed, published in 1852.

His Christmas story, The Fourth Poor Traveller, was reprinted under the title of The Lawyer’s Story of a Stolen Letter in the first collection of short stories by Collins, After Dark, which was published in 1856. 

An edition of The Lawyer's Story of a Stolen Letter is available from Amazon.

The Moonstone is available from or

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Don’t delay, start writing straight away!

How to avoid doing things that will postpone your literary success

Not having the ideal office chair should not
stop you putting pen to paper

People talk a lot about 'writer’s block' and how it can hold up a work in progress, but in my experience a far more dangerous thing to watch out for is 'writer's delay'. 

Not getting on with writing is often called procrastination, but I don’t like that label as it implies there is something deliberate about doing things to avoid writing, such as stopping to tidy your office, or sharpening all your pencils, or going on social media.

Many ‘How to Write’ books start with advice about finding a finding a suitable place in your house to write. Then there will be suggestions about what IT equipment you should have installed and many paragraphs will be devoted to the importance of choosing a comfortable chair.

I’m not saying any of these things aren’t helpful, but I don’t think they should stop you getting on with your writing if you already have some good ideas for a novel or a short story.

My advice would be to get your ideas on paper as quickly as possible. You can always type them up later and then revise what you have written as many times as you need to.

I recently read a book about how to write a crime novel that had several pages at the beginning dedicated to the importance of attending writers’ conferences, just to make you feel more like a writer!

I think that is a bad idea as it will just hold you up from starting to write. All you really need in order to get going are some strong ideas and a notebook and pen so that you can write the ideas down as soon as they occur to you. You should carry the notebook with you everywhere and note the ideas as quickly as you can while they are still fresh in your mind.

The other thing you need to do is to decide what genre your proposed novel or story belongs in and read some examples written by successful authors.

Make sure you carry a notebook
and pen or pencil at all times  

But you may well be a regular reader of the genre already, as most writers tend to want to write a book or short story of the sort they enjoy reading themselves. If you are already familiar with the genre, you can get straight on with writing. The main thing is to be clear about what type of fiction you are attempting to write before you start.

It is hopeless to try to write a detective novel, or a Regency romance, if you don’t ever read that type of book. If you write the sort of book that you enjoy reading yourself, you will already unconsciously have picked up the rules and conventions of the genre and will have a feel for what is right and what isn’t, as you write your own.

The plot of a book never comes to you fully formed, but you will get ideas for characters and settings as you go along and will need to make a note of everything that occurs to you straight away.

It can all be woven into a plot for a book with a beginning, middle and end and, hopefully, a satisfying conclusion for the reader, later on.

I sometimes get ideas for the novel I am currently working on as I am waking up in the morning. If it is the weekend, it is tempting to turn over and go back to sleep, and if it is a week day, you might be under time pressure to get up and start your day. But if you can possibly spare a few minutes after you have woken up, it is a good idea to write your ideas down in your notebook before they are lost to you for ever.

Another thing I find useful is a project book with coloured tabs separating the sections, so I can list in an organised way all the information about characters, setting, plot and themes that have occurred to me randomly and been jotted down in my notebook.

Of course, it’s nice to set up a smart, well-equipped writer’s office with a lovely, comfortable chair to sit in, but it should not be at the expense of getting on with your novel or short story.

It will probably be obvious where you will find peace and quiet in your house to write and you can make do with just the basic equipment and stationery you already have, to begin with. If you later find your chair is uncomfortable, just swap it with another one from somewhere else in your house.

Prolific and successful writers, such as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, probably didn’t waste a second thinking about their chairs, but just got on with writing all those books.

You could take a leaf out of the great Andrea
Camilleri's book and write a letter to yourself

If you do suffer from writer’s block after you have started the first draft of your novel, your project book, with its information about plot, setting, characters and themes, should provide you with the inspiration you need to keep on writing.

Another trick I have heard of is to just write anything you can think of on to the blank page to get yourself going, even if it is a couple of lines of poetry, or a paragraph of description that has no real connection with the story you are working on.

You could also take a tip from the great Italian crime writer, Andrea Camilleri, which I once read about in one of his Inspector Montalbano novels, The Potter's Field. Montalbano has reached deadlock in a case and can’t see any way forward, so he sits down and writes himself a letter, taking himself to task for his obtuseness and what he feels he has done wrong during his investigation.

You could write to yourself along the same lines and say: ‘Dear author, What is the connection between these two characters? Who has properties overlooking the field where the body was found and has your detective been to see them all yet? What would your protagonist usually do at this time of the day? How can you get him or her further forward with what they are trying to achieve?’ Usually, the answers you think of will help you get going with your story again.

But whatever you do, don’t let trivial things delay you from starting to write in the first place! You can wait until you have made some money from your first novel or short story before you buy yourself a smart writer’s chair!

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The Haunted Hotel

Is this a ghost story or is it a crime novel?

My 2015 edition of The Haunted 
Hotel, first published in 1878

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, published in 1868, has been talked of as the first English detective novel as it established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. There is a detective, Sergeant Cuff, a country house setting, false suspects and a final twist in the plot.

Wilkie Collins wrote The Haunted Hotel ten years after The Moonstone was published. I was delighted recently when I received a copy of The Haunted Hotel as a present because I wondered how closely it would resemble a detective story, which is my favourite genre. I was also intrigued because a lot of the story takes place in Venice, a city that I love.

Collins was known for writing sensation novels, or sensation fiction, which was at the peak of its popularity in the 1860s and 1870s. His novel, The Woman in White, published in 1860, is one of the finest examples of sensation fiction, so called because it was written to play on the nerves and excite the senses of the reader.

In The Haunted Hotel, Collins makes the reader think he is going to write a novel that deals with the supernatural, as very early in the book questions are raised about being able to predict the future and being able to sense evil in a room.

The story begins with a London doctor being visited by a foreign Countess who is desperate for him to tell her whether she is evil, or insane. She is about to marry a nobleman, Lord Montbarry, but has discovered that he was engaged to another woman when he proposed to her, who has subsequently released him from the engagement.

The Countess says she has been assured the other woman did not blame her for the break-up of her relationship with Lord Montbarry and that the true course of events had been explained to her. But she says that when she eventually met his former fiancée and saw the other woman’s eyes upon her she turned ‘cold from head to foot’ and experienced great fear.

Wilkie Collins is best known for
his 1859 novel The Woman in White

After the marriage has taken place and the couple are away on their honeymoon, the story is told from the point of view of the jilted woman, Agnes, who is perceived by all her friends as a kind, loving, good person.

Mrs Ferrari, a woman Agnes has known since childhood, then comes to her for help. She is married to an Italian courier who desperately needs work. She asks Agnes to recommend her husband to a newly married couple who are about to tour Italy. When Agnes discovers the couple are Lord and Lady Montbarry, she is reluctant to intervene, but out of sympathy for the woman she eventually agrees that the courier can mention her name to help him secure the job.

Mr Ferrari accompanies the newlyweds to Italy while Agnes goes to stay with friends in Ireland.

On her return to London she receives the news from Mrs Ferrari that the courier’s letters have stopped coming and that no one has seen or heard of him for weeks.

Then Mrs Ferrari receives a bizarre letter. It contains a £1000 note and a piece of paper with the words: ‘To console you for the loss of your husband.’

A few days later, Lord Montbarry’s brother, Henry Westwick, calls to see Agnes to break the news to her that Lord Montbarry has died of bronchitis in the Venetian palazzo where he had been staying.

Collins makes it seem inevitable that all the protagonists will meet again in Venice at some stage in the future. The palace where Lord Montbarry died is converted into an hotel and his brother, Henry, buys shares in it.

Later, friends of Agnes invite her on a trip to Italy with them and plan to visit Venice.

Henry’s sister and brother both separately visit the newly converted hotel that their brother has invested in and feel ill after staying in the best room, number 14, where they smell a foul odour. It turns out to be the room where Lord Montbarry died.

Events conspire to have Agnes allocated to that room when she arrives at the hotel with her party. The sinister Countess, who also happens to have returned to Venice is staying at the Hotel Danieli, but when she discovers that Agnes is staying at the newly converted palace she moves into the hotel.

Agnes then endures a night of horror in the room where Lord Montbarry died. At this point I am still wondering if this is a ghost story, or a tale about the supernatural.

There is no detective in the novel, but Lord Montbarry’s brother, Henry Westwick, sets out to find out what has taken place. He makes a discovery in the room above room number 14 that helps lead him to the truth.

A portrait of Wilkie Collins by
John Everett Millais

This is the room in the old palace that had been occupied by Baron Rivar, the brother of the Countess, who had enjoyed making chemical experiments.

The sinister Countess has died during the night of a ruptured blood vessel in the brain, but she leaves an unfinished play that provides Henry with clues to the fate of the missing Italian courier.

My conclusion is that Wilkie Collins did write a crime story after all. There was the sudden death of Lord Montbarry, whose life was insured for £10000 pounds in favour of his widow, the sinister Countess. The insurance company investigates the death but can find nothing to suggest it was not natural causes. The Italian courier disappears mysteriously. The amateur detective, Henry Westwick, discovers the truth when he visits the room above number 14 and reads a half finished play by the Countess, which helps him finally discover what happened to his brother..

The Haunted Hotel has many of the ingredients of a crime novel and the truth is not revealed until the end of the novel in the tradition of the genre. I can definitely recommend it to crime fiction fans.

The Haunted Hotel is available from and

(The Millais portrait of Wilkie Collins hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London)

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