Hide And Seek

Hide and Seek was Wilkie Collins' third published novel. It is the first of his novels involving the solution of a mystery, the elements of which are clearer to the reader than to the novel's characters. Suspense is created from the reader's uncertainty as to which characters will find out the truth, when and how. In drawing the character of Madonna, Collins studied the work of medical authorities on traumatic deafness. Careful research of unusual and unlikely plot events is a feature of much of his work, to which it gives an enhanced sense of realism. Critics have seen in Mr Thorpe Sr. a portrait of Collins' own father. A further biographical element is Zack's unwilling apprenticeship to a tea broker, paralleling Collins'. Peters also sees Blyth as being modelled on the artist Holman Hunt.