The Moonstone. A Romance

by Collins, Wilkie

$9,500 · Offered by Biblio

First edition

London: Tinsley Brothers, 1868. First edition. Very Good +. Three volumes, octavo (leaves measuring 182 x 120 mm). Bound without the half-titles and the ads, otherwise complete: [iii]-viii, 315, [1]; [2], 297, [1]; [2], 309, [1]. A Very Good+ example. Contemporary half red morocco over marbled boards. Some edgewear, with a bit of loss to crowns, and some rubbing to boards. Toning to endpapers and first and last couple leaves. Otherwise, quite clean throughout. An appealing set. Though not the first detective novel, Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone was a crucial early entry in the genre and a Haycraft-Queen cornerstone. First serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round, the novel "has remained second only to The Woman in White in popularity among Collins's novels" and has inspired "later writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers" (ODNB). Indeed, the basic elements of the novel – a gentleman detective, a bumbling local police officer, an heiress, a stolen jewel with a violent history, and a troupe of expert thieves – all reappeared twenty-two years later in Doyle's The Sign of the Four and remain genre tropes to this day. The novel met with great success upon its publication, with this first edition of just 1,500 copies selling out quickly, and has since been widely adapted for television and radio. Very Good +.

• Publisher: Tinsley Brothers
• Year: 1868
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: unknown

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