When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn't matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn't their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it's the fault of the fools who humour them.

He was often unable to leave his home and had difficulty writing. His next novel No Name combined social commentary – the absurdity of the law as it applied to children of unmarried parents (see Illegitimacy in fiction) – with a densely plotted revenge thriller. He learned Italian while the family was in Italy and began learning French with which he would eventually become fluent.

A number of Collins's works were first publiWilkie Collinsd in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words. The two collaborated on several dramatic and fictional works and some of Collins's plays were performed by Dickens's acting company. Writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he stated "I begin to believe in only one civilising influence—the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace.