Bah, humbug: Wilkie Collins at Xmas.

Wilkie Collins, bet. 1880
and 1890. Library of
Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division.

Paul Lewis provides these insights into Wilkie Collins's various works aimed for a holiday market and the author's cranky reactions to the season such as "This awful Christmas time! I am using up my cheque-book—and am in daily expectation of fresh demands on it." Perhaps he took a leaf from his friend Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.