SOURCE: "Wilkie Collins and Dickens," in Selected Essays, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932, pp. 409–18.

In the essay that follows, Eliot discusses melodramatic elements in the novels of Dickens and Collins.

It is to be hoped that some scholarly and philosophic critic of the present generation may be inspired to write a book on the history and aesthetic of melodrama. The golden age of melodrama passed, it is true, before any person living was aware of its existence: in the very middle of the last century. But there are many living who are not too young to remember the melodramatic stage before the cinema replaced it; who have sat entranced, in the front stalls of local or provincial theatres, before some representation of East Lynne, or The White Slave, or No Mother to Guide Her; and who are not too old to have observed with curious interest the replacement of...