Wilkie Collins was born on this date in 1824. Here are ten things you might not know about his most famous novel, The Moonstone. Warning: potential spoilers.
It’s not actually about a moonstone. The moonstone in the book is a Yellow Diamond, the Tippoo diamond, which was taken from India by a corrupt army officer called John Herncastle. Three Hindu priests dedicated their lives to recovering it.
The inspiration behind the diamond comes from two famous real life diamonds, the Orloff diamond, set in the Russian Imperial Sceptre, and the Koh-i-Noor, part of Queen Victoria’s Crown Jewels.
Herncastle leaves the diamond in his will to his niece, Rachel Verinder, who wears it at her 18th birthday party. It later goes missing from her room. Various people are suspected of taking it, including some Indian jugglers who called at the house; a servant named Rosanna Spearman who later committed suicide, and Rachel herself. Rachel suspects her cousin Franklin Blake. Despite the best efforts of Sergeant Cuff, a renowned Scotland Yard detective, the mystery remains unsolved at the end of the party.
Sergeant Cuff is based on a real life detective called Inspector Jonathan Whicher.
The final solution is only arrived at a year later through letters and testimonies of the various characters, and a re-enactment.
In the epilogue, it is revealed that the Moonstone has been returned to India and placed where it belongs, in the forehead of a statue of an Indian god.
Wilkie Collins’s working title for the book was The Serpent's Eye.
The story first appeared as a serial in a magazine, All the Year Round between 4 January and 8 August 1868, courtesy of Collins’s close friend, Charles Dickens. It was published in three hardback volumes on 16 July 1868, dedicated to Collins’s mother.
It is considered by many to be the first detective novel. TS Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe." Dorothy L. Sayers said it was "probably the very finest detective story ever written".
It has been adapted for film, radio, and television many times and there has even been a Marvel comic of it: issue #23 of the "Marvel Classics Comics" series.
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