The Dream Woman, Wilkie Collins
The Dream Woman, Wilkie Collins
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The Dream Woman

Author: Wilkie Collins

Narrator: Ryan Darcy

Unabridged: 1 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/09/2026


Synopsis

A nightmare becomes a warning. A marriage becomes a mystery. And one terrible date refuses to release its hold.

On the eve of his birthday, Francis Raven awakens to a terrifying vision: a strange woman stands over him with a knife, intent on taking his life. Was it merely a nightmare—or something far more sinister?

Years pass, but Francis never forgets the woman’s face. Then he meets Alicia Warlock.

Beautiful, unpredictable, and disturbingly familiar, Alicia bears an uncanny resemblance to the figure from his dream. Despite his mother’s fears and his own uneasiness, Francis falls in love and marries her. But as Alicia’s behavior becomes increasingly volatile, the boundary between prophecy and coincidence begins to disappear.

Told through multiple narrators, The Dream Woman combines psychological suspense, Gothic atmosphere, and supernatural uncertainty in a haunting exploration of fate, obsession, and the terrifying possibility that dreams may reveal more than they should.

The story first appeared in 1855 as The Ostler and was later substantially expanded by Wilkie Collins into The Dream Woman: A Mystery in Four Narratives, with new characters, incidents, and a new ending.

Narrated by Ryan Darcy.

About Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist who critics often credit with the invention of the English detective novel. Sergeant Cuff from Collins's novel The Moonstone became a prototype of the detective hero in English fiction. Collins's works center on mainstream Victorian domestic life. Collins liked to tackle social issues, and many of his novels contain sympathetic portraits of physically abnormal individuals. In addition to Moonstone, he is well known for his popular suspense thriller The Woman in White, No Name, and Armadale.

Collins was born in London in 1824 to William Collins, a well-known landscape painter, and Harriet Collins, the daughter of a painter. Despite a secure home, he was a small, sickly child and had a slightly deformed skull. He was educated privately and studied painting for several years. He later studied law and became a lawyer at the age of twenty-seven. Collins never practiced law, but he did put his legal knowledge to work in his crime writing.

In 1851, Collins met his lifelong friend and mentor Charles Dickens while they were pursuing a mutual interest in amateur theater. Dickens helped Collins bring humor and believable characters into his books.The two women in Collins's life-Caroline Graves, his life-long companion, and Mrs. Martha Rudd, his mistress-also greatly influenced his writing.

During the 1860s, Collins started to suffer severely from rheumatic pains and became addicted to laudanum, a form of opium. The death of Dickens in 1870 robbed him of his powerful inspiration, and his popularity declined. In 1873, he met Mark Twain and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on a trip to the United States. Soon thereafter he wrote The Evil Genius, which was published in 1886. Collins died from a stroke on September 23, 1889.


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