The Queen of Hearts

Complete and unabridged, with 57 full-page plates by William Morris Hunt, John Constable and John Atkinson Grimshaw. Three old brothers in a decaying house keep a young woman from leaving for ten days by telling her stories in turn — and one of the stories concerns her. Collins built the frame around his own magazine tales, and the best of them, Brother Morgan's story of the Dream-Woman, is as good as anything he wrote in a novel. Fifty-seven plates, among them moonlit Whitby harbour scenes by John Atkinson Grimshaw and Marianne North, echo the ten nights of storytelling that hold the guest in place.