Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

He was often unable to leave his home and had difficulty writing. His next novel No Name combined social commentary – the absurdity of the law as it applied to children of unmarried parents (see Illegitimacy in fiction) – with a densely plotted revenge thriller. He learned Italian while the family was in Italy and began learning French with which he would eventually become fluent.

A number of Collins's works were first publiWilkie Collinsd in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words. The two collaborated on several dramatic and fictional works and some of Collins's plays were performed by Dickens's acting company. Writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he stated "I begin to believe in only one civilising influence—the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace.