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What is a brilliant mind worth when it has no room for kindness?
Carmina comes to live with relatives in London after a loss. Warm-hearted and raised partly in Italy, she enters a household where affection competes with ambition. She falls in love with Ovid Vere, a young doctor who wants to care for his patients without losing his sympathy. Their love faces people who value knowledge above kindness.
Mrs. Gallilee fills her days with scientific lectures while neglecting her daughter, Zo. Doctor Benjulia, a gifted physiologist, gives himself to laboratory research with little room for pity. In Heart and Science, Wilkie Collins brings romance and family intrigue into a firm protest against experiments on living animals, asking where medical ambition should stop.
What you’ll discover
- Love with a conscience Follow Carmina and Ovid as their affection meets the demands of duty and medical ambition.
- A household short of warmth Meet Mrs. Gallilee, whose hunger for learned talk leaves her own daughter longing for attention.
- Brilliance without pity Encounter Benjulia, a skilled researcher whose devotion to his laboratory gives the story its darkest note.
- Fierce loyalty and plain speaking Discover Teresa's watchful devotion to Carmina and Zo's lively, outspoken need to be noticed.
- Questions that keep you reading Find chapters that close on questions, drawing family tension into the argument over knowledge and kindness.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who enjoy Victorian fiction with warm humor, sharp portraits of families and money, a love story under pressure, and a mystery behind a locked door.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Small accidents lead Ovid toward love
- Carmina feels the suffering around her
- An inheritance makes kindness look dangerous
- Benjulia keeps knowledge behind locked doors
- Separation leaves love dependent on letters
- Compassion turns a rival into an ally
- Science needs humility as well as knowledge
- Small kindnesses reveal what people become
Who’s who
- Ovid VereA gifted young London surgeon, worn out by overwork, who falls in love with his cousin and refuses to leave her.
- Carmina GraywellA gentle, sensitive girl of seventeen, orphaned and sent from Italy, who wants only to be loved and left in peace.
- Mrs. GallileeOvid's mother and Carmina's guardian, a learned hostess deep in debt, who wants her niece's fortune and will stop a marriage to keep it.
- TeresaCarmina's fierce old Italian nurse, who trusts her instincts and will do anything to protect her child.
- Miss MinervaThe sallow, clever governess, secretly in love with Ovid, who struggles between jealousy and a better self.
- Doctor BenjuliaA towering brain specialist who hides his laboratory and cares only for discovery, except for a soft spot for the child Zo.
- Mr. GallileeMrs. Gallilee's kind, silly husband, who loves champagne and his club and finds unexpected courage when it matters.
- ZoThe ten-year-old younger daughter, slow at lessons, blunt, and loyal to Ovid and Carmina.
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Heart and Science
by Wilkie Collins · 1883
A tired surgeon follows a stranger into a concert hall, and a scheming aunt plots to keep the lovers apart.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“Even Carmina may have enemies!”
In short
A surgeon is ordered to rest and is due to sail tomorrow. Instead he takes one short walk across London, and a string of small accidents leads him into a concert hall behind a girl in black.
Heart and Science at a glance
- Reading time
- About 8 h 25 min6 h 40 min fast, 10 h slow
- Length
- 119,700 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1883by Wilkie Collins
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Small accidents lead Ovid astray
Ovid Vere, a surgeon of thirty-one, has driven his brain too hard and must rest. A friend's yacht waits to carry him to the Mediterranean. Still, he cannot sit idle, so he sets out to check a single fact for an unfinished medical chapter.
Collins fills the walk with trifles. A bargain lot of lace for his mother goes badly. A foul smell drives him into Covent Garden, where he gives strawberries to a ragged girl carrying a large baby. Then he takes a forgotten prescription to a patient near the British Museum.
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Details
- First published
- 1883
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 9 h 30 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Collins, Wilkie. Heart and Science. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/heart-and-science.
Collins, W. (2026). Heart and science. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/heart-and-science (Original work published 1883)
Collins, Wilkie. Heart and Science. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/heart-and-science.
@book{collins2026heart,
author = {Collins, Wilkie},
title = {Heart and Science},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/heart-and-science},
note = {First published 1883}
}
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What is Heart and Science about?
It follows the surgeon Ovid Vere, who falls in love with his cousin Carmina, and the struggle of his mother, Mrs. Gallilee, to stop the match and keep a fortune. A doctor with a secret laboratory shadows the plot.
Who is Doctor Benjulia?
Benjulia is a tall, gloomy brain specialist who built a laboratory without windows in a lonely field. Everyone wonders what he does there, and his devotion to knowledge for its own sake carries the book's theme.
What does the title Heart and Science mean?
The title sets feeling against scientific study. Collins, quoting Walter Scott in his preface, asks whether science, when pursued far enough, can harden the heart, and the characters answer in different ways.
The author
Wilkie Collins
1824–1889 · English mystery novelist
Wilkie Collins was a British novelist and playwright born in London in 1824. He lived mainly in London and died there in 1889. His novels include The Woman in White (1859–1860), The Moonstone (1868), The Law and the Lady (1875), and The Black Robe (1881).
“Even Carmina may have enemies!”
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