C'était écrit

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer. The son of painter William Collins, he lived in France and Italy as a child and became fluent in both languages. Abandoning a law career, his first novel, Antonina was published in 1850. That same year he met Charles Dickens and the two became friends and frequent collaborators. Collins best-known works were published in the 1860s, including The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868).
The latter has been called the first modern English detective novel.