All great relationships begin with a little old-fashioned stalking!

The title character, Basil, is son of a man who treasures the family name above anything else. Basil sees dark beauty Margaret on a bus (actually an omnibus, but to modernize it for the comprehension of others we're going to stick with 'bus' here), realizes he must have her, stalks her a bit, and finds out she's the daughter of a linen-draper. That's like the bottom of the barrel according to Basil's father. He would never approve of any relation with such scum as a linen-draper's daughter so Basil concocts this fantastic plot to marry Margaret on the sly (with her scummy father's permission, of course - because what father in the world would turn down such an offer!?).

And... because this is a Wilkie Collins story and he had the likes of his buddy Charlie Dickens to contend with as an author, the story became very dramatic, and there's lots of pale faces and swooning and melodramas. And that's just coming from Basil. There's also an evil fellow named Mannion (which is just a creepy name by itself) and Basil's lovely sister Clara who sadly is also under the thumb of their father and not likely to get away.

This was actually just an okay story. I love Collins (primarily for The Moonstone and The Woman in White, both of which are seriously due for a couple re-reads), so I did have very high hopes for this one. I can't say I was disappointed but I certainly wasn't blown away as I was when I read those other two that everyone knows.

The Oxford World's Classic edition has some great end-notes, very helpful for figuring out some of the less common 19th-c vocabulary, or just for better understanding why some dude named Basil acts like such a wiener. This was Collins' second novel and I think it shows a slight lack of skill. It certainly felt like he was trying to write like his pal, Dickens, but hadn't quite found his own voice yet. Since I don't dislike Dickens either I can't say that this was a turn-off for me, though I will say again that I really found Basil to be quite the drag at times. Like to the point where I wanted to tell him to grow a pair already.