Wilkie Collins’s 1868 novel,
The Moonstone, is notable for being one of the first detective novels. As such, it begins certain trends that have now become synonymous with the genre, including the savvy policeman, the redundancy of suspects, the string of “red herrings”, the twists and turns, and the dramatic revelation of the truth. It was a popular, if not an entire critical success in its time, introducing its readers to this new kind of fiction in the same way Collins’s earlier novel,
The Woman in White, had ushered in the brief era of the sensation novel. In our time, it is on the basis of these two novels that Collins’s reputation with critics and popularity with readers lies.
During the period in which Collins was writing The Moonstone, his personal life was complex.
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Citation: Tredennick, Bianca. "The Moonstone". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 April 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=128, accessed 27 November 2024.]
