"Title-page for "No Name. A Novel" in 3 vols. (Sampson Low, London, 1862)

Title-page: No Name. A Novel [Sampson Low, London]

Title shortened for volume publication.

1862

Wood engraving

Wilkie Collins's No Name

Originally in Harper's Weekly Magazine, Vol. VI, and All the Year Round, 15 March 1862 — 17 January 1863.

Scanned image and caption by Philip V. Allingham

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By Wilkie Collins, Author of "The Woman in White," "The Dead Secret,"etc., etc., etc. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. [21 December 1862].

Biographical Note

WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS was born in London in 1824. His father was a painter, who went to Italy shortly afteer his son’s birth, and remained there till the latter had reached manhood. Mr. Wilkie Collins’s first work, “ANTONINA,” which was published in 1850, revealed his remarkable genius; but the subject was ill chosen, and the book did not meet with great success. His later NOVELS, especially the “WOMAN IN WHITE,” published in Harper's Weekly, have placed him in the first rank of contemporaneous Novel writers. — Harper's Weekly (22 March 1862), page 189.

Initial Publication History

No Name was initially published serially, with weekly numbers appearing simultaneously in Dickens's All the Year Round and Harper's Weekly from 15 March 1862 to 17 January 1863. It is the second of Wilkie Collins’s four best-selling novels, the others being The Woman in White (1860), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868). Like the others, No Name has features of the mystery, but is essentially a Sensation Novel. It first appeared in volume form on 21 December 1862 as a triple-decker (three-volume novel of the type popular with lending libraries) published by Sampson, Low, Son, and Marston (London). This edition, with red cloth covers and gilt lettering, was designed for lending libraries such as Mudie's. It had only a single illustration, the full-page frontispiece by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais. A new edition followed in 1863, with a single-volume edition for Sampson Low's "Favourite Library of Popular Books" appearing in 1864.

Related Material

Bibliography

Blain, Virginia. “Introduction” and “Explanatory Notes” to Wilkie Collins's No Name. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Collins, William Wilkie. No Name . Illustrated by John Mclenan. Harper's Weekly, Vol. VI. 15 March 1862-17 January 1863.

Collins, Wilkie. No Name [cheap edition]. London: Sampson & Low, 1864.

Collins, William Wilkie. No Name . Illustrated by John Mclenan. New York: Harper & Bros., 1873.

Collins, William Wilkie. No Name . Illustrated by John Mclenan. New York: Dover Publications, 1978.

Vann, J. Don. "No Name in All the Year Round, 15 March 1862-17 January 1863." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985: 46-47.

Created 6 October 2025