The Moonstone (Signet Classics) - Softcover

Collins, Wilkie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451531221 ISBN 13: 9780451531223

Publisher: Signet, 2009

Synopsis

The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday, but it is stolen again that very night. No one is above suspicion as the indefatigable Sergeant Cuff pieces together a series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand.
 
T. S. Eliot praised The Moonstone as “the first…and the best of modern English detective novels.” To this day, it draws the reader into its world of danger, suspense, and societal anxiety. Collins unmasks a restrictive society marked by sexual and imperial domination, as well as the often-ignored underside of Victorian life. In his hands, facts, identities, and memory are only transient. This spellbinding mystery, narrated in turn by characters highborn and lowborn, is a fascinating excursion into the shadows that lie just beyond the ordered landscape of English society.
  
With an Introduction by Alev Lytle Croutier and an Afterword by Lillian Nayder

About this title

About the Author

William Wilkie Collins (1824­–89) was born in London. He was educated for the law, but instead became a writer, achieving great popularity with such novels as The Woman in White (1860), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and his masterpiece, The Moonstone (1868). His life, both personal and professional, was profoundly affected by his friendship with Charles Dickens, who helped guide and ardently championed Collins’s writing, and whose work in turn was stimulated by Collins’s use of mystery and suspense. Though increasingly handicapped by a painful disease and by dependence on opiates used for relief, Collins continued to produce novels until three years before his death.
 
Alev Lytle Croutier, whose books have been translated into twenty-one languages, is the only woman novelist from Turkey to be published extensively worldwide. She is the author of the international bestseller Harem: The World Behind the Veil, novels such as The Palace of Tears and Seven Houses, and, for young readers, American Girl’s Leyla: The Black Tulip. The founding editor and editor-in-chief of Mercury House publishing company, she lectures frequently at universities, museums, and conferences.
 
Lillian Nayder is Professor of English at Bates College, where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century British fiction. She is the author of Wilkie Collins (1997) and Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Victorian Authorship (2002). With Graham Law, she coedits the Wilkie Collins Society Journal.
 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Collins: THE MOONSTONE

First Period the loss of the diamond (1848) The Events related by Gabriel Betteredge, House-Steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder

Chapter I

In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written:

“Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it.”

Only yesterday, I opened my Robinson Crusoe at that place. Only this morning (May twenty-first, Eighteen hundred and fifty), came my lady’s nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, and held a short conversation with me, as follows:—

“Betteredge,” says Mr. Franklin, “I have been to the lawyer’s about some family matters; and, among other things, we have been talking of the loss of the Indian Diamond, in my aunt’s house in Yorkshire, two years since. Mr. Bruff thinks, as I think, that the whole story ought, in the interests of truth, to be placed on record in writing—and the sooner the better.”

Not perceiving his drift yet, and thinking it always desirable for the sake of peace and quietness to be on the lawyer’s side, I said I thought so too. Mr. Franklin went on.

“In this matter of the Diamond,” he said, “the characters of innocent people have suffered under suspicion already—as you know. The memories of innocent people may suffer, hereafter, for want of a record of the facts to which those who come after us can appeal. There can be no doubt that this strange family story of ours ought to be told. And I think, Betteredge, Mr. Bruff and I together have hit on the right way of telling it.”

Very satisfactory to both of them, no doubt. But I failed to see what I myself had to do with it, so far.

“We have certain events to relate,” Mr. Franklin proceeded; “and we have certain persons concerned in those events who are capable of relating them. Starting from these plain facts, the idea is that we should all write the story of the Moonstone in turn—as far as our own personal experience extends, and no farther. We must begin by showing how the Diamond first fell into the hands of my uncle Herncastle, when he was serving in India fifty years since. This prefatory narrative I have already got by me in the form of an old family paper, which relates the necessary particulars on the authority of an eye-witness. The next thing to do is to tell how the Diamond found its way into my aunt’s house in Yorkshire, two years ago, and how it came to be lost in little more than twelve hours afterwards. Nobody knows as much as you do, Betteredge, about what went on in the house at that time. So you must take the pen in hand, and start the story.”

In those terms I was informed of what my personal concern was with the matter of the Diamond. If you are curious to know what course I took under the circumstances, I beg to inform you that I did what you would probably have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task imposed upon me—and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite clever enough to perform it, if I only gave my own abilities a fair chance. Mr. Franklin, I imagine, must have seen my private sentiments in my face. He declined to believe in my modesty; and he insisted on giving my abilities a fair chance.

Two hours have passed since Mr. Franklin left me. As soon as his back was turned, I went to my writing-desk to start the story. There I have sat helpless (in spite of my abilities) ever since; seeing what Robinson Crusoe saw, as quoted above—namely, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it. Please to remember, I opened the book by accident, at that bit, only the day before I rashly undertook the business now in hand; and, allow me to ask—if that isn’t prophecy, what is?

I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice—Robinson Crusoe. In past times, when my wife plagued me; in present times, when I have had a drop too much—Robinson Crusoe. I have worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service. On my lady’s last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and Robinson Crusoe put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.

Still, this don’t look much like starting the story of the Diamond—does it? I seem to be wandering off in search of Lord knows what, Lord knows where. We will take a new sheet of paper, if you please, and begin over again, with my best respects to you.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0451531221
• ISBN 13: 9780451531223
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 576