Showing results for title "The Moonstone", by author "Wilkie Collins" in Historical Fiction

The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. It is generally considered to be the first detective novel, and it established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel. The story was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are widely considered to be Collins' best novels, and Collins adapted The Moonstone for the stage in 1877, although the production was performed for only two months.

A priceless gem, a diamond from India imbued with religious significance, is stolen on the very night it is given as an eighteenth birthday present to a captivating heiress; and so the mystery begins. The rules for the golden age of crime novels are formed in The Moonstone – an English country house, a complex cast of characters, the bungling local constabulary, a celebrated sleuth and the reconstruction of the crime.