Wilkie Collins was born in London, England on January 8, 1824. He worked first in business and then law, but eventually turned to literature. During his lifetime, he wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, at least 14 plays, and more than 100 non-fiction pieces. His works include Antonia, The Woman in White, The Moonstone, The Haunted Hotel, and Heart and Science. He was a close friend of Charles Dickens and collaborated with him. He died on September 23, 1889.
Michael Heim is professor of Slavic languages and literature at UCLA. His previous translations include The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera; The Island of Crimea and In Search of Melancholy Baby, by Vassily Aksyonov; The Wedding, by Bertolt Brecht; and works by George Konrad, Gunter Grass, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, and many others. He has received the PEN/American Center West prize for translation, the American Literary Translators Association Prize, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, and a Fulbright.