Before The Woman in White made him famous, Wilkie Collins wrote his one and only comic novel — the sunny, scandalous confessions of Frank Softly. Disinherited and irrepressible, Frank tries his hand at caricature, portrait painting, forging Old Masters, and at last counterfeiting coins, narrating his cheerful ruin from the penal colony he has been shipped to. Sharp, funny, and gleefully technical about the art of the fake, this edition presents Collins's complete and unabridged novel, newly typeset and illustrated with 30 full-page color plates.