The Moonstone (Penguin Classics)
The Moonstone is one of the first true works of detective fiction, in which Wilkie Collins established the groundwork for the genre itself. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Sandra Kemp.
The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand. The intricate plot and modern technique of multiple narrators made Wilkie Collins's 1868 work a huge success in the Victorian sensation genre. With a reconstruction of the crime, red herrings and a 'locked-room' puzzle, The Moonstone was also a major precursor of the modern mystery novel. In her introduction Sandra Kemp explores The Moonstone's the detective elements of Collins's writing, and reveals how Collins's sensibilities were untypical of his era. Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was born in London in 1824, the eldest son of the landscape painter William Collins. In 1846 he was entered to read for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, where he gained the knowledge that was to give him much of the material for his writing. From the early 1850s he was a friend of Charles Dickens, who produced and acted in two melodramas written by Collins, The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep. Of his novels, Collins is best remembered for The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868). If you enjoyed The Moonstone you might like Collins's The Woman in White, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Probably the very finest detective story ever written'Dorothy L. Sayers 'The first, the longest and the best of modern modern English detective novels'
T.S. Eliot
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Community Reviews
The British-born writer Wilkie Collins was a contemporary and a friend of Charles Dickens. In 1868, Collins published The Moonstone. The American-British Poet T.S. Elliot considered the Moonstone to be the first mystery novel in the English language (Kemp vii). The Moonstone is readable. The Moonstone takes place in 1848 and 1849. In 1799, a British officer named Colonial John Herncastle took a diamond that belonged to the Hindu God of the Moon during the storming of Seringapatam in present-day Southern India. The defenders of Moonstone curse Colonial Herncastle. Colonel Herncastle is estranged from his sister who was named Lady Julia Verinder. When Colonel Herncastle dies, Lady Verinder’s daughter, Rachel, inherits the Moonstone on her 18th Birthday. There are mysterious circumstances around the delivery of the diamond to Rachel by her cousin Franklin Blake. The Moonstone is then stolen, which starts the plot of the novel. The novel is told by different characters through letters gathered by Franklin Blake. A scholar of English literature Sandra Kemps writes that “The Moonstone appeared a decade after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and Collins’s more reasonable views of Indians contrast strongly with the overt racism of most of his contemporaries” (Kemp xix). The character of Sergeant Cuff was inspired by Inspector Jonathan Wicher who investigated the Road Murder Case of 1860 (Kemp ix). The Goodreads Reviewer named Warren suggested that I read the book entitled The Suspicions of Mr. Wicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale along with Wilkie Collins’s novel, The Moonstone. Summerscale’s book is about the Road Murder Case of 1860. Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone was heavily influenced by the Road Murder Case of 1860 (Kemp ix; Summerscale 267-268). Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone is a readable and interesting novel that T.S. Elliot considered an early mystery novel in the English language.
Works Cited:
Kemp, Sandra. 1998. “Introduction” In The Moonstone by Wilkie Kemp, edited by Sandra Kemp. New York: Penguin Books.
Summerscale, Kate. 2008. The Suspicions of Mr. Wicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle.
What a [LONG] ride! I loved Collins‘s THE WOMAN IN WHITE, and this is his other best known work. Being a friend of Dickens, Collins serialized this book, so the more he wrote, the more he got paid. It could have been whittled down quite a bit, but part of the fun in reading Victorian literature is the fact that a lot of them are chunky! I loved the characters, the rollercoaster-ride-of-a story, and all that 19th-century British stuff EXCEPT colonialism. 😊
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