In his energy, his practice of many genres, and the eclecticism of his tastes, Mortimer Collins is a very good example of the kind of Victorian writer who, without achieving any large-scale success, contrived to make a profession of literature and who, in spite of the demands of Grub Street, succeeded in remaining a man of broad general culture. Edward James Mortimer Collins was born in Plymouth, the son of Francis Collins, a solicitor who had published a volume of verse. He became first a private tutor and then a schoolmaster in Guernsey (Channel Islands), but quit the teaching profession in 1856 to devote himself to literature. His earliest publications were poems, including the collection Idyls and Rhymes (1855). For the rest of his life he lived by journalism (as a contributor to Punch, Temple Bar, Tinsley's Magazine, and other periodicals), by editing various papers, and by producing nearly twenty...