The Moonstone Complete With Original Illustrations

Author : Wilkie Collins
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 461 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (656 download)

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Download or read book The Moonstone written by Wilkie Collins and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-12 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. It is generally considered to be the second detective novel, after The Woman in White and it established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel. The story was originally serialised in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are widely considered to be Collins's best novels, and Collins adapted The Moonstone for the stage in 1877, although the play was performed for only two months.Colonel Herncastle, an unpleasant former soldier, brings the Moonstone back with him from India where he acquired it by theft and murder during the Siege of Seringapatam. Angry at his family, who shun him, he leaves it in his will as a birthday gift to his niece Rachel, thus exposing her to attack by the stone's hereditary guardians, who will stop at nothing to retrieve it.Rachel wears the stone to her birthday party, but that night it disappears from her room. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been near the house; on Rosanna Spearman, a maidservant who begins to act oddly and who then drowns herself in a local quicksand; and on Rachel herself, who also behaves suspiciously and is suddenly furious with Franklin Blake, with whom she has previously appeared to be enamoured, when he directs attempts to find it. Despite the efforts of Sergeant Cuff, a renowned detective, the house party ends with the mystery unsolved, and the protagonists disperse.During the ensuing year there are hints that the diamond was removed from the house and may be in a London bank vault, having been pledged as surety to a moneylender. The Indian jugglers are still nearby, watching and waiting. Rachel's grief and isolation increase, especially after her mother dies, and she first accepts and then rejects a marriage proposal from her cousin Godfrey Ablewhite, a philanthropist who was also present at the birthday dinner and whose father owns the bank near Rachel's old family home. Finally Franklin Blake returns from traveling abroad and determines to solve the mystery. He first discovers that Rosanna Spearman's behavior was due to her having fallen in love with him. She found evidence (a paint smear on his nightclothes) that convinced her that he was the thief and concealed it to save him, confusing the trail of evidence and throwing suspicion on herself. In despair at her inability to make him acknowledge her despite all she had done for him, she committed suicide, leaving behind the smeared gown and a letter he did not receive at the time because of his hasty departure abroad.