At the age of twelve Collins’ father took him to Italy, where the family stayed for three years. After returning to England he worked for a time in the tea trade, then went on to study law. His great love of writing became clear after his father’s death in 1847, and he began his literary career with a book published in 1848, which dealt with the biography of his father as an artist. In 1850 Collins wrote his first novel, Annonia, or the Fall of Rome, which contained impressions of his three years in Italy. His successful novels followed, and in 1860 he wrote the story The Woman in White, which was broadcast on television in 1979 as part of the Great Stories series, as well as The Nameless, Armidale, and The Moonstone. Because of the success of all these novels, Collins was one of the few writers to have achieved widespread fame and popularity while still alive. The Moonstone confirmed Collins’s status as a first-generation novelist, although his style of having the characters narrate the events themselves was later severely criticised. Other famous writers, such as Bram Stoker (writer of Dracula), later used this style.