Of course there are many ‘first editions’ and not all date from the original publication, they may simply be the first printing by a particular publisher. The Moonstone follows the attempts of Rachel’s cousin Franklin Blake to identify the thief, trace the stone and recover it. Later the same night, the diamond is stolen. At her birthday party Rachel wears the Moonstone on her dress for all to see. However the diamond is not only valuable but has great religious significance, and so three Hindu priests dedicate their lives to recovering it.

On her 18 th birthday, Rachel Verinder inherits a large Indian diamond as a legacy from her uncle, a corrupt British army officer serving in India. A diamond, actually, not a semi-precious moonstone. The title page of the first edition shows the publisher as Tinsley Brothers, Catherine Street, The Strand, London in 1868. First serialised in Charles Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round, the story revolves around the theft of a precious stone. The first full-length detective novel ever published was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. His best-known works are The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone.Before Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes and Adam Dalgliesh. Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. No Name is a 19th-century novel revolving around the issue of illegitimacy. The story starts with a deathbed confession by the murderer in the form of a letter to be given to his baby son when he grows up. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale).

Armadale is a mystery novel and has a convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale.

Besides creating many of the ground rules of the detective novel, The Moonstone also reflected Collins' enlightened social attitudes in his treatment of the servants in the novel. The Moonstone is an epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. The story is sometimes considered an early example of detective fiction with the hero, Walter Hartright, employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. The Woman in White is considered to be among the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of 'sensation novels'. Sinopsis de THE MYSTERY NOVELS OF WILKIE COLLINS

La Piedra Lunar by Wilkie Collins