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Retold by: David Wharry
Introduction
'Look, grabriel!' cried Miss Rachel, flashing the jewel in the sunlight It was as large as a bird's egg, the colour of the harvest moon, a deep yellow that sucked your eyes into it so you saw nothing else.
When Colonel John Herncastle dies in England, a hated, lonely old man, he leaves a jewel to his niece, Rachel Verinder, for her eighteenth birthday.
But the jewel is not a gift - it is a curse. Because the Colonel stole the beautiful Moonstone from India and he knew that disaster will follow the thief of the stone and all who receive it after him.
And on the same night that Rachel is given the stone, it is stolen again. Who took it, from a locked house, surrounded by guard dogs? And what is the secret that Rachel will not tell anyone? The curse of the Moonstone is beginning. . .
Wilkie Collins has been called 'the father of the English detective story' . He was born in London in 1824 and educated there for a few years. But his real edication came on a two-year tour of Italy with his family from 1836 to 1838.
For a short time, he worked for a tea company, and also studied las, but he was already writing in his teens. By 1848 he had published his first book, the life of hin father, a painter. Atonina, a historical story, followed this in 1850. But he found his true direction in Brasil (1852), which is a story of mystery and crime.
His best work written in the 1860s: The Woman in White (1860), No Name (1862), Annadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868). These were the first full-length detective stories in English and were extremely popular. He wrote fifteen more books after these four but never equalled their quality, possibly because in his later years he suffered health problems and took opium to fight the pain. Wilkie Collins died in 1889.
