Ĭover designs for older editions of The Moonstone tend to be romanticized, often featuring details from larger classical paintings. Watch the trailer here for the most recent BBC mini-series in 2016. There have been many television, radio and film adaptations, including in 1997 a BBC/Carlton TV production featuring Greg Wise as Franklin Blake and Keeley Hawes as Rachel Verinder. Above is the current Penguin Classics edition. There are many editions of The Moonstone now listed at Amazon, many are self-published and take advantage of the lack of copyright. Bound in red Morocco leather and including colour lithographs, it costs £450 at rare bookseller Peter Harrington. George Macy’s Heritage Press reprinted classic volumes previously published by the more exclusive Limited Editions Club. I wonder where they are and who owns them? Fans of crime fiction? This first edition dates to 1959 and was published in the USA by the New York Heritage Press. Although I could find online a first edition of Collins’ The Woman in White, dated 1860 and costing £2,500, I could find no similar edition of The Moonstone. 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. Before Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes and Adam Dalgliesh.
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