1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Traveller's Story of a Very Strange Bed," Wilkie Collins weaves a masterful tale that combines elements of gothic fiction, mystery, and psychological intrigue. This novella is structured as a first-person narration, reflecting a distinctive Victorian literary style that emphasizes suspense and engages with themes of fear and social critique. Set against the backdrop of the 19th-century travel narrative genre, Collins employs vivid imagery and a meticulous attention to psychological detail, drawing readers into an unsettling exploration of a dubious boarding house and the strange events that unfold within it. Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Charles Dickens and an early pioneer of detective fiction, was deeply influenced by the conventions of mystique and social commentary prevalent in his era. His own experiences in travel and his keen observations of societal norms often colored his narratives. Collins was renowned for pioneering complex characters and intricate plots, which allowed him to delve into issues such as class disparity and moral ambiguity'—elements clearly reflected in this unsettling tale. This captivating tale is recommended for readers who enjoy psychological thrillers and those who appreciate the nuances of Victorian literature. Collins's ability to weave suspense with social commentary delivers a multifaceted reading experience that is both engaging and thought-provoking. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
The Traveller's Story of a Very Strange Bed
Table of Contents
Introduction
A night’s easy winnings in a glittering foreign city tip into terror when comfort itself becomes a snare. This is the taut central premise that Wilkie Collins distills into The Traveller’s Story of a Very Strange Bed, a tale that turns ordinary pleasures into instruments of peril. Collins invites readers to follow a confident wanderer whose appetite for novelty carries him into the shaded margins of urban entertainment. The story’s lingering power lies in how swiftly convivial spaces sour into threat, how politeness masks predation, and how the promise of respite ripens into a moral test of judgment, composure, and instinct for survival.
The piece is regarded as a classic because it presents, in miniature, the qualities that secured Collins’s reputation as a pioneer of sensation and crime fiction: meticulous pacing, lucid prose, and unnervingly plausible menace. It staged, early in his career, the union of everyday realism with high-tension plotting that he later expanded in his major novels. Its influence can be traced in the short suspense tradition that privileges ingenuity over gore and psychological unease over supernatural intervention. That continuing lineage, along with the story’s durable legibility, has kept it a fixture in anthologies of Victorian short fiction and in discussions of narrative craft.
Wilkie Collins, born in 1824 and active through the high Victorian period, first saw the story into print in 1852 in Household Words, the weekly edited by Charles Dickens. He later republished it within his framed collection The Queen of Hearts in 1859, where it took the form and title used here. The tale is short, set in Paris, and recounted in the first person by a traveler whose curiosity leads him into nocturnal gaming rooms and unwise hospitality. Collins writes with the brisk assurance of a journalist and the moral acuity of a storyteller attentive to the consequences of chance.
At its simplest, the narrative follows an Englishman abroad who, carried by boredom and bravado, drifts into a late-night gambling house. Fortune initially favors him, and the atmosphere of conviviality seems to promise safe indulgence. As celebratory cordiality turns persuasive, he is coaxed toward what appears to be a reasonable accommodation for the night. What follows is the discovery that invitations in unfamiliar cities can conceal calculations colder than they seem. The story maintains its grip by narrowing the focus to one room, one guest, and one escalating problem, drawing suspense from the traveler’s wits rather than from coincidence or spectacle.
Collins achieves his effects through economy and precision. He establishes setting with a few exact strokes, giving the reader street-level Paris, then cuts distractions to track a single chain of decisions and their consequences. The first-person voice supplies credibility and immediacy while leaving room for ironic distance. Detail is practical and concrete, never ornamental for its own sake. The result is a narrative that feels brisk yet complete, with a rhythm that accelerates almost imperceptibly from casual observation to crisis. This craft places the tale alongside the most polished Victorian short fiction and helps explain its long-standing appeal to editors and readers.
Themes emerge with clarity: the intoxication of risk, the vulnerability of the solitary traveler, the thin membrane separating hospitality from predation, and the way modern urban life amplifies both temptation and danger. Collins is especially alert to how environments shape behavior, mapping a path from the public noise of gaming tables to the private hush of a chamber where consequences sharpen. He also engages the perennial question of trust: how we read faces, interpret kindness, and assess danger when custom and conversation encourage recklessness. The tale thus doubles as a brisk moral fable about discernment without lapsing into sermon or caricature.
As a landmark in Collins’s shorter work, the story foreshadows later developments in popular narrative, including procedural logic, material clues, and the transformation of domestic objects into agents of threat. Its careful calibration of fear within a recognizably modern setting broadened the scope of what short fiction could accomplish in a few pages. Subsequent writers of crime and sensation adopted this compression and its emphasis on plausible circumstances, sustaining tension through clear causality rather than contrived coincidence. The piece demonstrates how the short form can rival the novel in impact, making it a reference point in the evolution of nineteenth-century suspense.
The historical context intensifies its interest. The 1850s saw vigorous debate about gambling, urban vice, and the moral ambiguities of cosmopolitan leisure. Rapid travel expanded cross-channel tourism, bringing British visitors into contact with Parisian amusements and their attendant risks. Periodical publication meant stories needed to seize attention quickly and satisfy readers within a single sitting. Collins answers those pressures with a compact narrative aligned to contemporary anxieties yet free of sensational excess. The result documents, without documentary heaviness, a specific social world while offering a timeless portrait of how confidence, luck, and opportunism intersect in lively public spaces.
Collins’s purpose can be read as at least twofold: to entertain with steadily mounting suspense and to illuminate the ethics of chance-taking. Within The Queen of Hearts, the storyteller’s frame underscores that tales are tests of judgment for listeners as much as for protagonists. Here, the traveler’s experience becomes a study in seeing clearly under the glare of pleasure. Collins neither scolds nor romanticizes; he composes a situation where character is examined by circumstance. That balance of amusement and inquiry has long characterized his fiction, and in this compact canvas he demonstrates how a single episode can carry significant moral and psychological weight.
The narrative voice is crucial to the effect. Calm, descriptive, and occasionally wry, it resists hysteria and allows the reader to register peril through observation rather than exclamation. That restraint invites us to participate in the traveler’s reasoning, to consider what we might do, and to appreciate how small choices accumulate toward crisis. The voice also keeps the focus on verisimilitude, making extraordinary danger feel uncomfortably possible. By aligning us with a narrator who is neither a master detective nor a fool, Collins avoids easy archetypes and cultivates empathy. The story’s persuasiveness rests on this credible, unshowy intelligence.
