In the autumn of 1873, Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins began a six-month tour of America. Following the example of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, he arranged to give a series of public readings from his works, hoping he might achieve the same financial benefit that they had realized. He further hoped to promote his books, meet with friends and collect material for his writing. Unlike the earlier ventures of Dickens and Thackeray however, relatively little research has been devoted to Collins's American reading tour.

The intention of this study is to provide a sense of the America that Collins encountered and, in so doing, contribute to an understanding of the challenges and successes of celebrities who came to America in the second half of the nineteenth century. As a librarian, I have focused on providing a biographical narrative of Collins's tour, identifying where possible the ‘stops’ on his trip, and collecting the contemporary periodical reviews recording the reception of Collins's performances. As a result, this study provides the reader access to biographical and reception data not available outside of archives, but does not engage in a literary critical or literary theoretical discussion of those artefacts.

Study of the Dickens and Thackeray tours was significantly facilitated because both were accompanied by assistants who meticulously recorded their activities. Dickens travelled with George Dolby who carefully documented Dickens's time in America in Dickens as I Knew Him, while Thackeray brought along Eyre Crowe who, as an artist and amanuensis, detailed their trip in With Thackeray in America. Although Wilkie Collins hired his godson Frank Ward to assist him for part of his own tour, no records from Ward have been found. Published works about Collins's tour have been confined to short articles or chapters based on known letters, in spite of the fact that he gained impressions from his visit that would influence his writing for the remainder of his life.