A long book. Due to a chain of string of events two sisters are left penniless. The story focuses mainly on the youngest Magdalen. I didn't like Magdalen. She swung from cold calculating to extremely depresses. The parts that was told in letters was the most enjoyable. ( )

Magdalen and Norah Vanstone are the daughters of a wealthy landowner and expect to inherit a substancial legacy on the death of their parents. However a change in circumstances, and a catastrophic event will alter the course of their lives irrevocably.....nothing will ever be the same again. Collins was a prolific writer from the mid nineteenth century and his novels were often described as "sensation" but he did tackle and highlight issues of the time. No Name was in part a social commentary concerning the absurdity of the law as applied to children of unmarried parents. The storyline is a little incredible however the author, as a great lover of women, often has strong even devious female characters, and in the same breadth he is not afraid to show men as weak and pitiful unworthy of the reader's sympathy. The writing is fluid and very accessible, which is important as the page count is just under 800. I found myself engaging totally with the characters (not something I can always attain in modern thrillers) and hoping that the outcome for our 2 heroines would be favourable......Here are some examples of the descripitve prose....." a seductive, serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playfully graceful, that its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the movements of a young cat"......." whose personal appearance was little less than a triumph of physical resistance to the deteriorating influence of time"...." the elegant black gown in which she mourned the memory of Michale Vanstone was not a mere dress- it was a well made compliment paid to death".......If you have not already discoverd the delights of one of our great English authors then No Name is a superb novel to begin. Highly recommended :) ( )

Shall I tell you what a lady is? A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown, and has a sense of her own importance.

While I’ve read Collins’s more famous The Woman in White and The Moonstone, both several times, I hadn’t read the other two of what are considered his four major sensation novels: No Name and Armadale. I’m glad that I’ve begun to correct that oversight with this fun, well-plotted, and highly addictive book.

No Name is filled with deceit, disguises, death, and, of course, laudunum—tropes you would expect in a sensation novel, but handled here with Collins’s expertise with law at the forefront. The two sisters, Magdalen and Norah, who find themselves illegitimate and therefore cast solely on their own resources, are painted very convincingly, allowing Collins to comment on the social and cultural restrictions for women at that time in daily life as well as in the letter of the law.

Magdalen, in particular, is a very unusual Victorian heroine, the likes of which I’ve not encountered before, and which made me long to re-read Gissing’s The Odd Women. Magdalen’s tenacious desire to regain the fortune that is rightfully hers and her sister’s makes up the bulk of No Names’s plot, which journeys all over England and sees some of the finest and most delicious villains which only Collins can make sympathetic rogues and anti-heroes. While there is some high melodrama—what sensation novel doesn’t have melodrama?—I think it was used quite convincingly and deliberately here, less intrusive or annoyingly so than in some of the minor works of, say, Braddon or Mrs. Henry Wood.

For those in quarantine, self-isolating, and in need of a literary diversion or escape, might I suggest a hefty, 800-page sensation novel? No Name's a compulsive one to get lost in, for sure. ( )

Una imprevista tragedia familiar que descubre la ilegitimidad del nacimiento de las hermanas Vanstone las deja privadas de todo derecho a recibir su herencia. Solas, sin posición, sin fortuna, sin nombre, estas dos hijas de nadie afrontarán con desigual talante su inesperado destino. Mientras la mayor, Norah, acepta su destino con resignación, Magdalen, la menor, se rebela contra él y encara un peligroso camino. Sin nombre es una extraordinaria novela que combina una trama familiar de venganzas con una denuncia social: en realidad Wilkie Collins pretendía criticar una absurda ley que se aplicaba en aquella época a los hijos de padres no casados.

Two young women who are"bastards" lose their parents$to a greedy cousin. Magdalen, the younger sister, vows to get their dollars back.

I read Volume I, so there is more to come, and I am looking forward to it ( )