Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, poet, and playwright writing in the mid 19th century. His writing was very popular consisting of 27 novels, 50 short stories, 15 plays, and over 100 poems. His best-known works were The Woman in White, The Moonstone and Armadale. Collins used as his model for The Dead alive the story of two brothers, Jesse and Stephen Boorn who were sentenced to death in Vermont in 1819 for the murder of their brother-in-law. A year later in 1820 they were exonerated when their "victim" showed up alive and well in New Jersey