About The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins’s spellbinding tale of romance, theft, and murder inspired a hugely popular genre–the detective mystery. Hinging on the theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine, this riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, the hilarious house steward Gabriel Betteridge, a lovesick housemaid, and a mysterious band of Indian jugglers.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive 1871 edition.
- Complete Title: The Moonstone
- Format: Paperback
- Language: English
- Number of Pages: 528
- Publication Time: September 11, 2001
- Publisher: Modern Library
- ISBN: 0375757856
- ISBN13: 9780375757853
About Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
A close friend of Charles Dickens from their meeting in March 1851 until Dickens’ death in June 1870, William Wilkie Collins was one of the best known, best loved, and, for a time, best paid of Victorian fiction writers. But after his death, his reputation declined as Dickens’ bloomed.
Now, Collins is being given more critical and popular attention than he has received for 50 years. Most of his books are in print, and all are now in e-text. He is studied widely; new film, television, and radio versions of some of his books have been made; and all of his letters have been published. However, there is still much to be discovered about this superstar of Victorian fiction.
Born in Marylebone, London in 1824, Collins’ family enrolled him at the Maida Hill Academy in 1835, but then took him to France and Italy with them between 1836 and 1838. Returning to England, Collins attended Cole’s boarding school, and completed his education in 1841, after which he was apprenticed to the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. in the Strand.
In 1846, Collins became a law student at Lincoln’s Inn, and was called to the bar in 1851, although he never practised. It was in 1848, a year after the death of his father, that he published his first book, ‘The Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R.A’., to good reviews.
The 1860s saw Collins’ creative high-point, and it was during this decade that he achieved fame and critical acclaim, with his four major novels, ‘The Woman in White’ (1860), ‘No Name’ (1862), ‘Armadale’ (1866) and ‘The Moonstone’ (1868). ‘The Moonstone’, is seen by many as the first true detective novel T. S. Eliot called it “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels …” in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe.
Reviews The Moonstone
Bill Kerwin
The Moonstone, generally recognized as the first detective novel (despite the appearance of The Notting Hill Mystery a few years before), is not only a work of historical importance but also a work th…
Jeffrey Keeten
The Moonstone was published in 1868 and is considered by most people to be the first detective novel. Given the novels place in the history of the genre, that alone should put this book on most pe…
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
4.5 stars, rounding up, for this 1868 Victorian-era mystery, often considered the first English-language detective novel. Wilkie Collins spins a literary web that starts out slowly but then inexorably…
Anne
Holy shit! This was actually funny and I was not expecting that at all. It was a serialized story, so it tends to ramble in places and not wrap up as quickly as it probably would have otherwise. Howev…
Sean
The following is a recently found letter written by the English author Charles Dickens to his friend Wilkie Collins concerning the latter’s newly released 1868 novel The Moonstone:Charles Dickens11…
Paul Bryant
The problem with mysteries – for me, anyway, is that I don’t care who did it. Which is a drawback. I just think well, it’s one of those characters the author has given a name to, it won’t be the fou…
Piyangie
The Moonstone is probably the most popular work of Wilkie Collins in his day. Perhaps it still is or perhaps The Woman in White rivals its rank at present times. But no matter, its popularity in C…
Daniel
I was torn between giving two stars and three stars to Wilkie Collins’s “The Moonstone,” a book T. S. Eliot called “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels.” “Longest”…
Alex
The Moonstone is known as the first detective novel*, and it’s a cracking one. You can see things invented here that were directly borrowed by future writers: Holmes’ overconfidence (and his use of Lo…