Charles Allston Collins, dating from 1850, drawn by fellow illustrator John Everett Millais.
Charles Allston Collins (1828 – 1873) was a British painter, writer and illustrator. He was a friend of Charles Dickens and married to his daughter, Kate.
Collins was born in Hampstead, north London on 25 January 1828, the son of landscape and genre painter William Collins, and educated at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.
His older brother was the novelist Wilkie Collins.
In the late 1850s, however, he abandoned art to follow his brother into a writing career.
Collabouration with Charles Dickens
Charles Allston Collins co-wrote a number of short works with Dickens. These included:
- A Message from the Sea (1860). With Wilkie Collins, Robert Buchanan, Amelia Edwards and Harriet Parr.
- Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1861). With Wilkie Collins, Amelia Edwards and John Harwood.
- The Trial for Murder (1865).
- Mugby Junction (1866). With Andrew Halliday, Hesba Stretton and Amelia Edwards.
He later designed the cover for Dickens’ unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Collins married Charles Dickens’s daughter Catherine Elizabeth Macready Dickens (Kate) in 1860.
He died from cancer in 1873 and was buried at Brompton Cemetery, London.
After his death, Kate married another artist, Charles Edward Perugini.
Further Reading.
Click here to view the Wikipedia entry for Charles Allston Collins.