Neglected Nineteenth Century Literature - Miss or Mrs?

I’m very fond of the lesser known works of Victorian fiction. Miss or Mrs?' is a novella by Wilkie Collins which poses a number of the sort of ethical and moral problems that Collins likes to tackle.

The lovely and precocious Natalie has been engaged by her grandparents to the much older Richard Turlington whom she detests. The grandparents believe Turlington to be rich and a good catch for Natalie who is the product of a liaison between their son and a former slave on the family plantation in the West Indies. Natalie however has other ideas in the form of her cousin Launcelot. She marries Launcelot in order to prevent marriage to Turlington, but there is one snag. She is only 15 and it is not legal to marry under 16. So is she a Miss or is she a Mrs? And what evil plot is Turlington hatching. Read the story to find out.

Wilkie Collins had a strange personal life maintaining two long-term unmarried households. He supported both families for decades while living a dual domestic life. He never married either woman (or anyone else). His refusal of formal marriage has been linked to personal principles, observations of unhappy marriages (see Dickens), and contemporary legal disabilities for wives, though social-class differences and his mother’s views also played a role during her lifetime. The arrangement was unconventional and carefully managed for the era. He led a stable double domestic life while protecting the women and children as far as the circumstances permitted. The theme of the problems of children of unmarried parents is tackled in his novel No Name.