Customer Reviews

The Black Robe

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This book contains tiresome characters in an anti-catholic setting. For a Wilkie Collins book, it is absolutely dreadful. Still, it is a Collins book, so at least it is well written. A man and woman marry. A Jesuit, out to get the man's property, breaks up the marriage and succeeds in making everyone miserable, including the reader. While I had heard of the prejudice against Jews and Catholics in Victorian England, it never hit home until I read this book.

I read this book on my Kindle from the Wilkie Collins Collection. Its not one of his greatest but it is a fine book. A young man suffering from an emotional shock is being manipulated by 2 groups. The first group is made up of friends who want to see him married. The second group is headed by a Catholic priest who wants to see the young man converted and return the Abbey* property back to the Church. [*Lands which were taken from the Church by Henry the VIII in the 16th century and given to the young man's family.] The 2 groups working against each other make the book humorous in the beginning. It only turns tragic later on with a somewhat happy ending.

It is one of Collin's shorter works and well worth reading. If this book was being written in modern times. A fictional cult would be created, but the Roman Catholic Church is useful for the plot because of its views on marriage and divorce.