The Moonstone (Oxford World's Classics)

by Wilkie Collins (Author), John Sutherland (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $4.58

  'the first and greatest of English detective novels' T.S.Eliot A fabulous yellow diamond becomes the dangerous inheritance of Rachel Verinder. Outside her Yorkshire country house watch the Hindu priests who have waited for many years to reclaim their ancient talisman, looted from the holy city of Somnauth. When the Moonstone disappears the case looks simple, but in mid-Victorian England no one is what they seem, and nothing can be taken for granted. Witnesses, suspects, and detectives take up the story in turn. The bemused butler, the love-stricken housemaid, the enigmatic detective Sergeant Cuff, the drug-addicted scientist, each speculate on the mystery as Collins weaves their narratives into a masterpiece of construction and suspense. But The Moonstone is more than just a detective novel or a murder mystery and this new edition features a fascinating introduction by John Sutherland which discusses the themes of Imperialism, Sensationalism and Mesmerism and the way in which they operate in the novel and within its cultural context.

• Used

  Paperback
  1991

  $3.26

  The moonstone is a yellow diamond of unearthly beauty brought from India and given to Rachel Verrinder as an eighteenth birthday present, but the fabled diamond carries with it a terrible curse.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1944

  $3.26

• New

  Paperback
  1992

  $7.03

  Introduction and Notes by David Blair, Rutherford College, University of Kent. The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond which had been brought to England as spoils of war, is given to Rachel Verrinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night, the stone is stolen. Suspicion then falls on a hunchbacked housemaid, on Rachel's cousin Franklin Blake, on a troupe of mysterious Indian jugglers, and on Rachel herself. The phlegmatic Sergeant Cuff is called in, and with the help of Betteredge, the Robinson Crusoe-reading loquacious steward, the mystery of the missing stone is ingeniously solved.