The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins · first published 1800
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Mystery novel often called the first detective story in English, praised for its gripping plot and its pleasure as a nineteenth-century page-turner; suits readers of classic sensation fiction and Victorian storytelling.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
One of the first English detective novels, this mystery involves the disappearance of a valuable diamond, originally stolen from a Hindu idol, given to a young woman on her eighteenth birthday, and then stolen again. A classic of 19th-century literature.
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…literature took a while to catch up. Detective stories survive this the best (nothing is “real-time”) and historical fiction (no phones in Ancient Rome). Ironically this traces a thread of literature. “The Moonstone” by Wilkie Collins was the first mystery story and also the first technologically “modern” story as it was the first in which people could telegraph to London and have a detective arrive by train later…
on “An Elegy for the Landline in Literature” ↗…thousand times yes to Trollope, and I think there are a lot of nineteenth-century novelists who are like that (not quite as well known as the biggest names, but absolutely superb). Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone, The Woman in White) is another good example from that category.
on “Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?” ↗…Dickens is pretty lacking as well; I vaguely remember not liking A Tale of Two Cities in high school. Bleak House is probably the one on my list. I did read and enjoy the two obvious Wilkie Collins novels (Moonstone and Woman in White) and have also seen the latter in what I think is an underrated musical. I've heard rather mixed things and haven't tried other works.
on “Mutual Friends: The Adventures of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins” ↗Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone and G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories.
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗…Rain—Hanif Abdurraqib Daemon Voices—Philip Pullman Carceral Capitalism—Jackie Wang So Many Books—Gabriel Zaid The Collected Schizophrenias—Esmé Weijun Wang 53. Best books I've read in the last 10 years: The Moonstone—Wilkie Collins Moby Dick—Melville Infinite Jest—DFW Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—Dillard Impro—Johnstone Time and the Art of Living—Grudin Le Ton beau de Marot—Hofstadter Death and Life of Great American Cities—Jacobs…
on “Ask HN: Are books worth it?” ↗Drood was a fascinating read, and was my first exposure to Wilkie Collins. Reading Drood is the reason I have a copy of The Moonstone on my shelf waiting to be read at this very moment.
on “Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?” ↗Related to Dickens and Collins: anyone who's read works by Dickens (who hasn't) and Collins (usually The Moonstone or The Woman in White) and would enjoy a fictional exploration of their relationship in a somewhat darker, rather macabre setting with Wilkie Collins as an unreliable (opium addicted) narrator might consider…
on “Mutual Friends: The Adventures of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins” ↗…but I would like to recommend a lesser known title of Simmons for readers who have read at least some works of Charles Dickens (self-explanatory) and Wilkie Collins (such as The Woman in White or The Moonstone). Simmons wrote Drood (2009), which takes these two classical authors and places them in a mystery novel. What struck me as particularly masterful is that Simmons managed to write his prose in such a…
on “Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, Song of Kali, dead at 77” ↗The history of the detective story goes back further than Holmes, Poe, or Collins. The first Sherlock Holmes story was A Study in Scarlet[1] which appeared in 1887. Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone[2] appeared in 1868. Poe's first detective story was The Murders in the Rue Morgue[3] which appeared in 1841. Before that was ETA Hoffmann's Mademoiselle de Scuderi[4] (featuring a female detective,…
on “The Enduring Fascination with Sherlock Holmes” ↗…has endured while Wilkie Collins has faded. The two were contemporaries, but Collins was much more famous and successful (and the inventor of the detective novel!). Yet hardly anyone reads even The Moonstone any more, while much of Dickens’ work is not only read but has become cultural touchstones (Scrooge, Oliver Twist, etc).
on “Which Writers Will We Remember?” ↗