The Moonstone: 1 (Oxford World's Classics) - Hardcover

Collins, Wilkie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0192100289 ISBN 13: 9780192100283

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

The first World's Classics were introduced by some of the greatest writers of their day, including Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot. In these hardback editions, contemporary novelists including A.S. Byatt and Joyce Carol Oates introduce their favourite classics in original pocketbook size. Echoing the original World's Classics series, the books are produced to gift-book standard with stitched binding, head and tail bands, printed on 60msg paper and featuring matt laminated jackets in a "retro-look" design. Here, P.D. James provides an introduction to one of the greatest mystery novels in English literature, Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone". The Moonstone is an enormous diamond plundered from an Indian shrine after the Siege of Seringapatam. Given to Miss Verinder on her 18th birthday, it mysteriously disappears that very night. Combining a teasing plot with a vivid portrait of Victorian England, Collins has his characters reveal themselves - and the solution to the mystery - by telling their own stories.

About this title

Review

"Perfect for long, cold, winter evenings" (The Times)

"A whodunit about a lost jewel with several different narrators 'the first English detective story' is so ingenious, so melodramatically rational, so druggy and glittery and cleverly elusive, that it triumphs over all its impersonators" (Observer)

"A great, bold, theatrical mystery story which never falters, written with huge confidence and style" (Joanna Trollope)

"Wilkie Collins, along with Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens is generally acknowledged to be the great-great-grandfather of the modern mystery, but it's hard to think of many modern mysteries as skillfully shaped and psychologically keen as this one. The story flirts with the conventions of Victorian melodrama, but the characters that people it are truly vivid" (Elizabeth Kostova)

"No wonder 21st-century novelists are influenced by the great Victorian serial writers with their rip-roaring plots. A twisting detective thriller" (Joanna Briscoe Independent)

From the Publisher

Contains an 8-page plate section with long-unavailable pictures and drawings relating to Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone. Thoroughly edited and extensively annotated. Includes a 10,000-word section on Wilkie Collins's life and works, with a longer chapter on The Moonstone, anecdotes, critical perspectives, adaptations and spin-offs. Lavishly produced on natural, high-quality paper, and affordably priced.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0192100289
• ISBN 13: 9780192100283
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 572