Wilkie Collins's later novels are often as concerned with social issues as they are with simple storytelling--but
as more and more critics are suggesting, the best of them are as readable and thought-provoking today as they were
when they first appeared. Of none is this more true than of his 1883 novel Heart and Science, which Collins himself
placed alongside his masterpiece The Woman in White.
Heart and Science turns on the fate of the orphaned Carmina Graywell, who is left in the charge of her aunt and
guardian Mrs. Gallilee when her fiancé is forced to take an extended trip to Canada's drier climes in order
to recover his health. Over the issue of her inheritance Mrs. Gallilee schemes to manipulate, control and ultimately
destroy the naïve but strong-willed Carmina. The story is complicated by the machinations of Dr. Benjulia,
a dark genius whose passionate devotion to the study of diseases of the brain leads him to encourage the progress
of Carmina's life-threatening brain illness for the sake of scientific observation; the narrative builds to a pair
of spectacularly lurid climactic scenes.
Collin's novel tackles the debate over what he termed 'the hideous secrets of Vivisection' with a passionate intensity
aroused in large part by the sensational 1880s case of a doctor who was acquitted on charges laid under the new
Cruelty to Animals Act of having practiced live experimentation on animals without a license. Excerpts from a
contemporary account of this trial, together with other documents relating to the vivisectionist controversy and
a variety of contemporary reviews of the book, are included among the appendices of this volume. The edition also
includes a full introduction, chronology, explanatory notes and a note on the text.
Heart and Science's story of the struggle between strong-willed women will strike chords of sympathetic understanding
with modern readers--as will its vivisectionist theme, with it's clear parallels to the animal welfare/ animal rights
debates of today.