Wilkie Collins turned the sensation novel into a weapon. A young woman finds herself married, under Scotland's irregular-marriage law, by a form of words she never knew were binding — and the man who spoke them is a brutal athlete who wants her only now that she is legally his property. Written in 1870 as a double assault on the marriage laws and the Victorian cult of muscular sport, it made both establishments howl. This edition presents the complete and unabridged novel, newly typeset and illustrated with 50 full-page color plates.