The Moonstone (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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More About This Book

Overview

The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

 

Alongside Edgar Allan Poe in America, Britain’s Wilkie Collins stands as the inventor of the modern detective story. The Moonstone introduces all the ingredients: a homey, English country setting, and a colorfully exotic background in colonial India; the theft of a fabulous diamond from the lovely heroine; a bloody murder and a tragic suicide; a poor hero in love with the heroine but suspected of the crime, who can’t remember anything about the night the jewel was stolen; assorted friends, relatives, servants, a lawyer, a doctor, a sea captain—suspects, all; and, most essentially, a bumbling local policeman and a brilliant if eccentric London detective. Adding spice to the recipe are unexpected twists, a bit of dark satire, a dash of social comment, and an unusual but effective narrative structure—eleven different voices relate parts of the tale, each revealing as much about himself (and, in one case, herself) as about the mystery of the missing Moonstone.

Filled with suspense, action, and romance, The Moonstone is as riveting and intoxicating today as it was when it first appeared more than a century ago.

 

Joy Connolly teaches in the Classics Department at New York University. Her recent research includes the history of rhetoric and political thought, and the relationship of literature and ethics. She writes book reviews for the New York Times and other publications.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781593083229
  • Publisher: Barnes & Noble
  • Publication date: 8/1/2005
  • Pages: 544
  • Sales rank: 47,880
  • Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
  • Product dimensions: 7.94 (w) x 5.30 (h) x 1.38 (d)

Meet the Author

Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
Joy Connolly teaches in the Classics Department at New York University. Her recent research includes the history of rhetoric and political thought, and the relationship of literature and ethics. She writes book reviews for the New York Times and other publications.

Biography

Wilkie Collins has long been overshadowed by his friend and collaborator Charles Dickens -- unfortunately for readers who have consequently not discovered one of literature's most compelling writers. His novels are ceremonious and none too brief; they are also irresistible. Take the opening lines of his 1852 story of marital deceit, Basil: "What am I now about to write? The history of little more than the events of one year, out of the twenty-four years of my life. Why do I undertake such an employment as this? Perhaps, because I think that my narrative may do good; because I hope that, one day, it may be put to some warning use." It's a typical Collins opening, one that draws the reader in with a tone that's personal, but carries formality and import.

With his long, frizzy black beard and wide, sloping forehead, Collins looked like a grandfatherly type, even in his 30s. But his thinking and lifestyle were unconventional, even a bit ahead of his time. His characters (particularly the women) have a Henry James–like predilection for bucking social mores, and he occasionally found his work under attack by morality-mongers. Collins was well aware of his books' potential to offend certain Victorian sensibilities, and there is evidence in some of his writings that he was prepared for it, if not welcoming of it. He writes in the preface to Armadale, his 1866 novel about a father's deathbed murder confession, "Estimated by the clap-trap morality of the present day, this may be a very daring book. Judged by the Christian morality which is of all time, it is only a book that is daring enough to speak the truth."

Collins began his career by writing his painter father's biography. He gained popularity when he began publishing stories and serialized novels in Dickens's publications, Household Words and All the Year Round. His best-known works are The Woman in White and The Moonstone, both of which -- along with Basil -- have been made into films.

Collins often alludes to fantastic, supernatural happenings in his stories; the events themselves are usually borne out by reasonable explanations. What remains are the electrifying effects one human being can have upon another, for better and for worse. His main characters are often described in terms such as "remarkable," "extraordinary," and "singular," lending their actions -- and thereby the story -- a special urgency. In one of his great successes, 1860's The Woman in White, Collins spins what is basically a magnificent con story into something almost ghostly: The fates of two look-alike women -- a beautiful, well-off woman and a poor insane-asylum escapee -- are intertwined and manipulated by two evil men. One of those is among the best fictional villains ever created, the kill-‘em-with-kindness Count Fosco. Fosco is emblematic of another Collins hallmark -- antagonists who manage to throw their victims off guard by some powerful charm of personality or appearance.

The Moonstone, published in 1868, is regarded by many to be the first English detective novel. Starring the unassuming Sergeant Cuff, it follows the trail of a sought-after yellow diamond from India that has fallen into the wrong hands. Like The Woman in White, the novel is told in multiple first person narratives that display Collins's gift for distinctive and often humorous voices. Whether it is servants, foreigners, or the wealthy, Collins is an equal-opportunity satirist who quietly but deftly pokes fun at human foibles even as he draws nuanced, memorable characters.

Though The Woman in White and The Moonstone are Collins's standouts, he had a productive, consistent career; the novels Armadale, No Name and Poor Miss Finch are worthwhile reads, and his short stories will particularly appeal to Edgar Allan Poe fans. Fortunately in the case of this underappreciated writer, there are plenty of titles to appreciate.

Good To Know

Collins studied law, and though he never practiced as a lawyer, his knowledge of the subject is evident in his fiction. He also apprenticed with a tea merchant in his pre-publication years.

He was addicted to laudanum, a form of opium that he used to treat his pain from rheumatic gout.

Collins never married, but he had a long-term live-in relationship with one woman, and a second romance that produced three children.

He is named after popular artist Sir David Wilkie; both his parents were painters who counted Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth among their friends.

    1. Also Known As:
      William Wilkie Collins (full name)
      Wilkie Collins
    1. Date of Birth:
      December 8, 1824
    2. Place of Birth:
      London, England
    1. Date of Death:
      September 23, 1889
    2. Place of Death:
      London, England

Read an Excerpt

From Joy Connolly’s Introduction to The Moonstone

"King of inventors” was the title given to Wilkie Collins at the height of his powers, and popular opinion has since ranked The Moonstone (1868), rivaled only by The Woman in White (1859–1860), as Collins’s greatest masterpiece of invention. Mystery buffs know it as the first detective novel in English; fans of nineteenth-century literature prize its blend of sensational thrill, social criticism, and romance. Set by turns in the country comfort of Victorian squiredom, London townhouses, seashore lodgings, and in exotic landscape of India, the novel retains the page-turning suspensefulness that captivated its first generation of readers. "A very curious story,” wrote Charles Dickens, Collins’s close friend and mentor, "wild, and yet domestic—with excellent character in it, great mystery. . . . It is prepared with extraordinary care, and has every chance of being a hit” (Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 3, p. 660; see "For Further Reading”).

A hit it certainly was. The story first appeared in 1868 as a thirty-two part serial, beginning on January 1 and ending August 8, in Dickens’s weekly magazine All the Year Round. In the summer, as the final segments unveiled the solution to the mystery of the theft of the Verinder family’s Indian heirloom, avid readers packed the streets outside the magazine’s offices in the hope of securing copies, and bets were placed on the outcome of the plot. Sales records of the magazine, as well as the hardbound edition, and the popularity of the stage play that quickly followed, suggest that fans were not disappointed. An appreciative reviewer for the London Times declared Collins an unrivaled master in the business of sensational novel-writing. Geraldine Jewsbury, a well-respected critic and also a friend of Dickens, praised Collins’s achievement in stronger terms. Her admiration for his sympathetic portrayal of characters on the margins of society, especially women, the poor, and people of color, in part anticipates the novel’s appeal to the diverse readership of the present day. As for Dickens, whether from an honest change of heart or sheer jealousy (The Moonstone outsold Great Expectations), he ultimately dismissed the book, complaining sourly in a private letter that its construction was "wearisome beyond endurance.”

Today, as then, Dickens is contradicted by a host of admiring readers. Unfolding in twelve separate voices in fourteen blocks of narrative during which the great yellow diamond of the title is stolen no less than four times, the novel’s construction is an extraordinary feat. The expertly timed switch from voice to voice (a favorite novelistic device of Collins) gives a democratic, upstairs-downstairs feel to the book. Collins’s sensitivity to social injustice, a lifelong theme of his work, makes itself felt in the contrasting perspectives of the intensely sympathetic, tormented Doctor Ezra Jennings, and the cheerfully self-absorbed Franklin Blake. Blake is the cousin and suitor of Rachel Verinder, heir to the stolen Moonstone, and it is he who collects the narratives more than two years after the diamond’s theft, "in the interests of truth, to be placed on record in writing”—a fictional echo of Collins’s own habitual protestations that his novels were based on real events and careful research.

Staking claim to authenticity is a staple of Collins’s professional specialty, the Victorian subgenre of sensational fiction—denounced by high-minded clergymen and critics as a corrupting influence on public morals, and embraced by the British middle class for its racy pleasures. Sensational fiction was part of the historic explosion in mass culture that emerged in its modern form in the Victorian era. Industrialization and urbanization, the double-edged achievements of mid-nineteenth-century Europe and America, were opening up unprecedented stretches of leisure time that could be whiled away in zoos, public gardens, Turkish baths, music halls, amateur sports, charity work, literary societies, lectures on everything from magnetism to the causes of poverty, and reading. Novels like Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret and Ellen Wood’s St. Martin’s Eve terrified and entertained readers with the tragic undersides of this modern society—especially the workhouse, brothel, and lunatic asylum—and with the hidden crimes of domestic life, from abuse and illegitimacy to suicide and murder.

More often than not, these tales are moralistic in the simplest sense, making the bad end badly and the good end well, and though the bad occasionally escape the reach of human law, the authors make it clear that they will not escape God’s. If they strike modern tastes as more exploitative than improving, it’s worth recalling that sensational tales helped make everyday human suffering a central concern of British popular culture. Unlike their modern counterparts in the televised melodrama or pulp novel, many of them back real and realizable goals of social reform. Collins’s The Woman in White is often said to lead the genre, with its chilling portrayal of the prison-like terrors of the madhouse and the desolation of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children. The Moonstone, though it owes much to sensational literature and was certainly marketed as such, is more difficult to classify. Readers tend to hail it instead as anticipating a new mode of writing, as T. S. Eliot did when he called The Moonstone "the first, longest, and greatest” of all English detective novels—a sentiment echoed by mystery writers Dorothy Sayers, P. D. James, and many others since.

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 156 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted January 3, 2006

    Enchanting from the first page.

    I have never read any of Wilkie Collins' books before (although I look forward to doing so) and found this book to be extraordinarily intriguing. He is able to capture the reader's attention from the very first page and continues doing just that throughout the rest of the book. His characters are very well chosen and distinguished and his style of writing is very captivating.

    8 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 22, 2006

    A Compelling Detective Novel!

    I wanted to read this book because I love mysteries and classics and it seemed to be getting good feedback. However, this is one of the highest level mysteries I have read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I loved how there were several narrators to keep it flowing and all of them were very different people. It has many twists and turns and I was very surprised at the ending! The only thing that stops me from giving it a 5 is that at times it was very dull and confusing but the rest of the novel makes up for it! I will certainly be reading more from Collins!

    7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 1, 2010

    My own personnel Moonstone is....THIS AWESOME BOOK!!!

    O My Gosh. You just love the narrators in the story. Especially sweet, sweet Betteredge!! At first in the mystery i started to hate Lady Verinder and thought that Sergeant Cuff was figuring out the mystery when BAM!!! Sergeant Cuff, the GREAT Sergeant Cuff, had it all wrong!!! It made you want to read on and on and on! But at the same time if you had to stop reading you sort of could-like even though it was soooo annoying as to find it all out you weren't always thinking about it once you had to stop reading it. And then only to think that the actual person who had stolen it was that certain person(totally can't say who!) was astounding!! I mean, they mentioned suspicions towards the person and i myself had had some too but not strong ones so it was it was still sort of hard to believe, and not only that but the person in which the stone was passed onto was also unexpected--and that person's true character was yet also surprising!Gosh, i LOVE THIS BOOK. And heck yeah!!! You better darn read it!! This book is my wonderful treasure---My Moonstone!!

    5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 12, 2006

    Great Stuff!

    This is really a simple detective story that has been written in a likable manner. Three main protagonists tell the tale of the stolen diamond. Among the three the narrative of Miss Clack is quite enjoyable. This book pokes fun at religious fanaticism, sycophancy and stratified social norms of Victorian England. But what attracted me was the way Indian Characters are treated by the writer. Absence of condescension and racial bigotry marks the writer¿s sympathetic viewpoint of the Indian Characters and even rationalizes their murder of the perpetrator. One is then surprised to note that this novel is way ahead of it¿s time, as Indians characters are still either patronized or vilified albeit couched in innuendoes. Though not exactly in the league of the great classics it is undeniably exquisite piece of work! The writer was a great friend of Dickens ¿ who I believe mistreated him and as a result Collins was often depressed. That could well mean that Dickens was jealous of Collins and rightly so. Except for Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, I find Dickens¿ writing boring and unnecessarily convoluted. For instance, one does have a hard time reading Hard Times, especially considering that Emile Zola had taken the same subject in Germinal and made it interesting and a delight to read.

    4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 2, 2008

    deathly boring

    it starts off really really really slow.. but after a few hundred pages it picks up pace and gets into the plot.

    3 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 13, 2007

    Wonderful

    It is incredible!!! I never guessed who it was, a must.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted November 29, 2006

    Collins hasn't let me down yet

    I started reading this story about a month and a half ago. For the first 40 pages, I wasn't sure if I could stay interested in the first narrator's tale. But as the story went on, I realized that everything he was saying was key to the mystery. I could hardly put it down even when my eyelids started to droop uncontrollably at night. I was relieved to get sick over the weekend and decided to devour the last half of the book on a Sunday afternoon. It was soooo good, that I even forsook my favorite TV program to finish it. I was BLOWN away by all the events. They got better and better and built up to an amazing finale. The only narrator who annoyed the socks off of me was Miss Clack. But then again, everything she told was key to the story. I was amazed at how each narrator had a voice of their own even though it was all written by ONE person. And when certain evidence was revealed, I gasped from shock as though I was seeing the whole thing with my own eyes. By far, the most incredible, captivating mystery I've ever read. I don't care what anyone else says. The change in narrators keeps you from getting bored with the writing style and I will recommend it to ANYONE and EVERYONE who truly appreciates British literature. Thanks to this book, I'm now going to pursue the rest of his works.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 14, 2005

    A great classic that entertains the modern reader

    I highly recommend Collins' The Moonstone. It kept my attention throughout with a storyline that was both interesting, entertaining, and a quick read. It reads like a combination of Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, and Edith Wharton...part mystery, part romance, and part social commentary.

    2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted October 25, 2011

    Victorian sleuthing done right.

    Wilkie Collins is great fun to read. His philosophies are somewhat (and refreshingly) liberal for his time, particularly those in regard to servants, foreigners and women. His stories are sprinkled with just a dash of wit and satire, yet his characters and their motives are crystal clear and believable. In this, arguably one of the first mystery novels, (Poe began it all, after all, did he not?) the plot revolves around a stone, a great gem that has been stolen from an Indian idol. A birthday present to our heroine, it is stolen the same night it is given, and through a series of changing narratives the mystery is uncovered. It's a clever twist of plotting to make the hero the villain and then the hero again, but how it comes about I will not say. No one likes to have a mystery spoiled. The Moonstone is a thoroughly enjoyable read. I highly recommend it.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 18, 2010

    Not For Teenagers

    For her 18th birthday Rachel Verinder is given the dazzling Moonstone, an enchanting diamond stolen from an Indian temple. In the dark, the diamond has an eerie glow, making it subject to stories of curses and superstition. It was gifted by her infamous late uncle, only to be stolen that very night. When Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate, he realizes that no one in Rachel's household is above suspicion. This mystery is exciting, but it's aimed at a middle aged audience. For any teenager the plot is too slow and the language difficult to understand. It's a brilliant read if you're patient. A classic mystery story, and one of the very first mystery novels.
    Wilkie Collins was born in 1824 and died in 1889. He was one of the most popular novelists of his day, and wrote many great mystery stories. You could call him a mystery expert because the way he wrote this book showed a deep understanding of the way mysteries are solved. A good mystery novel should have suspense, crime, and a enticing detective . The Moonstone covered them all. Near the start of the book there is already some foreshadowing. As the narrator Mr. Betterage tells us, "If I could only have looked a little was into the future, I would have taken Rosanna Spearman out of the house, then and there, with my own hand." Also, throughout the story the people around Sergeant Cuff, including the readers begin to get 'detective fever'. This is when you get an urge to continue reading, and you desperately want to find out what is going to happen next.
    In many detective novels, the object of the story was to trace the influence of circumstances upon the character of the people. In other words, use how the people behaved to find out who committed the crime. Collins has reversed this process. The attempt in this story is to figure out the character of the people using the circumstances. In a lot of ways, it is a physiological experiment. Another one of the story's assets was that the story of the diamond is not entirely fiction. The inspiration for the moonstone was actually the stone that sits on top of the Russian Imperial Scepter, which was once the eye of an Indian idol. The idea of the curse came from the famous Koh-i-Noor, another sacred gem of India. It is prophesied to bring certain misfortune to the people who divert it from its ancient uses. It was these realistic objects, along with a new way of solving mysteries and the intricate patterns of character's lives, that made the book so unique. I have read no other mystery books that are as complicated as this one. In a book like The Orient Express by Agatha Christie the mystery story follows the pattern that most mystery stories do. The crime is committed, the detective solves the mystery, the criminal is caught. Still an enjoyable read, but it doesn't have the kind of depth that the Moonstone has. In the Moonstone you not only find out about the crime being solved, but you get the opportunity to observe the nature of human activity. It tries to explain what makes people tick.
    In conclusion, the Moonstone was a long but unique read, most suitable for anyone from the late thirties up. The story's high points were the suspense, the detective fever, and the realistic approach in the setting. The book would not appeal to a teenager because of the complexity and consideration put into the details of the story. This book is highly recommended to anyone who likes a challenge and a game of wits.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 3, 2012

    Tigerstar

    Starclan!? I need to talk to you.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 31, 2012

    Well Written

    This was a very entertaining book and despite how long ago it was written seemed more modern at times than it actually is. The book is written in a series of letters that give each character's viewpoint of the story and how it progressed concerning the Moonstone. I only found one character's account a bit trying but I think that was the point as she was a most pompous and sanctimonious individual. Well written.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 30, 2012

    Sunsting (StarClan)

    Worrying about your Clan is a good thing; it doesn't bother me at all. And you're welcome.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 12, 2012

    Sparkfoot

    We just do the first book that pops up. In this case it's origins vampire diaries.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 12, 2012

    Sparkfoot

    To Help-Sorry, I don't know where that is. '_' To Flamingstar-We should totally organize a gathering for the original cats who at least REMEMBER the battle against the fm's.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 11, 2012

    Sparkfoot

    Well, I doubt there are any other Sparkfoots... it's a pretty unique name...

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 10, 2012

    Sparkfoot to Spiritwhisper

    I suppose I am by now.... Q-Q

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 7, 2012

    Ninja to thorn

    What happened to base

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 26, 2012

    Saah t everubodt EPI NEWS

    HAYDEN DEAD HIS MOM THREW OUT HIS N.OOK WE SHOULD HAVE A PARTY

    0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 28, 2012

    THE DYNASTY IS COMING BACK!

    THE DYNASTY IS COMING BACK!

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