After Dark

After Dark Summary

After Dark is a collection of six short stories by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1856. The stories are framed by a narrative involving William Kerby, a traveling portrait-painter, and his wife, Leah. When William's deteriorating eyesight threatens his profession, Leah suggests he dictate the intriguing tales he's gathered from his clients, which she transcribes, resulting in this compilation.

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After Dark Excerpt

Short Summary: This collection features six short stories, each introduced by a prologue, exploring themes of mystery, crime, and the supernatural, all framed within the narrative of a portrait-painter and his wife compiling these tales.

Excerpt from 'The Traveler's Story of a Terribly Strange Bed':

"Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to be staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then, and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of our sojourn. One night we were idling about the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati's; but his suggestion was not to my taste. I knew Frascati's, as the French saying is, by heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for amusement's sake, until it was amusement no longer. 'Suppose we go somewhere else?' said I. 'Very well,' said my friend, 'we are in capital cue for gambling, and have ten pounds apiece in our pockets. Let us go and put it all on a single stake at the gaming-table.' 'Just what I was about to propose,' said I; 'but let us do it at some place where we have not lost and won that particular sum already.' 'Exactly,' replied my friend. 'We must go to some new place. But what place?'"

This passage sets the stage for a suspenseful tale of risk and revelation, characteristic of Collins's storytelling."