Armadale - Wilkie Collins - The third of Wilkie Collins's four great novels of the 1860s, coming after 'The Woman in White' and 'No Name' and immediately before 'The Moonstone', 'Armadale' is quintessentially a novel of its decade. It deals with the emergence of the autonomous, sexually active woman from the dichotomies of Madonna and Magdalen; with the legal tangles of the unsatisfactory marriage laws; with the perception of the growing role of scientific intrusion into the privacy of the individual psyche. Above all, it explores the divided self, and the need to acknowledge the darker side of the personality: a modern theme grafted on to a traditional melodrama, and worked out with all Collins's skill in handling a complex and exciting plot.In the end, the novel is a story of redemption that teaches that the sins of the fathers are not necessarily visited on the children, and the son of a murderer can turn out good. Collins was to take this up again later in The Legacy of Cain.'Armadale' was first published in serial form in Cornhill Magazine in 20 monthly instalments. The first instalment appeared in the November 1864 issue and the last in the June 1866 issue. It also appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in America in serial form between December 1864 and July 1866. It first appeared in book form as a two volume literary edition in May 1866.