Wilkie Collins was an English author and playwright who lived from 8 January 1824 to 23 September 1889. He is best known for his works The Woman in White (1859), a mystery and early "sensation novel," and The Moonstone (1868), which has been dubbed the first modern English detective fiction. When he was twelve, he traveled to Italy with his parents, painters William Collins and Harriet Geddes, where they lived for two years while he learned both Italian and French. He began his career selling tea. Following the publication of Antonina, his debut book, in 1850, Collins became friends with and a mentor to Charles Dickens. Dickens' journals All the Year Round and Household Words published some of his writing. They also worked together on fiction and drama. By the 1860s, Collins had achieved financial security and a large following worldwide. However, he developed an opium addiction, which caused him to lose both his health and the caliber of his work in the 1870s and 1880s. Collins criticized the institution of marriage. He divided his time between younger Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children, and widow Caroline Graves, with whom he lived for the majority of his life and treated her daughter as his.