The family then calls in the highly renowned detective, Sergeant Cuff. The local police come in but find nothing. That night, as she sleeps, the diamond is stolen. Three mysterious Indians are seen outside the house. Nevertheless, the stone is given to Rachel and she wears it prominently at her birthday party. Franklin Blake, Rachel’s cousin, learns about the curse of the stone and worries that this is not a gift, but as a way to pass on the curse of the stone to the rest of the family.
On his death he gives the stone to his niece, Rachel Verinder, on her 18 th birthday. Anything.Ĭolonel Herncastle is shunned by the rest of the family and lives a fairly unhappy life, probably due to the curse of the stone. Because the stone is of great religious significance to the Hindus, three priests are assigned to guard it – they will do anything to find the stone and return it to India. The story begins when Colonel Herncastle, a soldier in India in 1799, sees the sword, commits murder to get it, and brings the Moonstone back to England. The moonstone is a gigantic yellow diamond that is originally set in the forehead of an Indian statue but is at some point embedded in the hilt of a sword. Besides creating many of the ground rules of the detective novel, The Moonstone also reflected Collins’ enlightened social attitudes in his treatment of the Indians and the servants in the novel.
The Moonstone and The Woman in White are considered Wilkie Collins’ best novels. The story was originally serialized in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. They are full of mystery and adventure and – I think – are not meant to be taken too seriously. You can see how they were real cliffhanger reads at the time, and why Collins was so successful. Both books are fun reads, if you can say that about Victorian novels the size of these two books. I’m still trying to decide if I liked The Moonstone better or The Woman in White… but it’s a silly question, really.
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