THE MOONSTONE BY WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS

Nina Roslyakova UE-4

William Wilkie Collins(8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889)• Wilkie Collins was an English

novelist, playwright, and author of short stories.

• His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale, and No Name.

• Collins was born into the family of painter William Collins in London.

• Home education.• Academy and a private boarding

school.• Travelling to Italy and France.• A clerk in the firm of the tea

merchants Antrobus & Co.

William Wilkie Collins(8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889)

• His first novel is Iolani, or Tahiti as It Was; a Romance (1845).

• His next novel is Antonina (1850).

• He met Charles Dickens.

• A number of Collins's works were first published in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words.

• Collins published his best known works in the 1860s, achieving financial stability and an international reputation.

• During this time he began suffering from gout (подагра), and developed an addiction to opium, which he took for pain.

The Moonstone• The Moonstone is a British

epistolary novel, written in 1868, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language.

• The story was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round.

• Collins adapted The Moonstone for the stagein 1877, but the production was performed for only two months.

Screen version• In 1934, the book was made into

a critically acclaimed American film, The Moonstone by Monogram Pictures Corporation.

• In 1959, the BBC adapted the novel into a television serial.

• In 1996 it was remade for television by the BBC.

•The BBC has commissioned a new television adaptation of The Moonstone (2013).

Literary significance• The book is regarded by some as the precursor of

the modern mystery novel and suspense novels.

• T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels in a genre

invented by Collins and not by Poe“.

T. S. Eliot

The legend of the moonstone

• The Moonstone of the title is a diamond.

• It gained its name from its association with the Hindu god

of the moon, Shiva.

•Originally set in the forehead of a sacred statue of the god at Somnath, and later at Benares, it was said to be protected by hereditary guardians on the orders of Vishnu.

The symbol

• The Moonstone stands, in the first place, as a symbol for the exoticness, impenetrability, and dark mysticism of the East.

• The butler Gabriel remarks that the stone "seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves" and "shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness, with a moony gleam, in the dark."

• In the second place, the Moonstone is associated with femininity and even feminine virginity, through its associations with the moon and with pricelessness.

Summary

• The novel consists of a series of narratives from some of the main characters.

• Rachel Verinder inherits her uncle's Indian Diamond on her eighteenth birthday.

• The Moonstone disappears on the night of Rachel's birthday.

Summary• For some strange reason, Rachel

stops speaking to Franklin Blake, and Rosanna Spearman, a servant, commits suicide.

• Franklin Blake realizes that HE must have taken the diamond.

• Franklin confronts Rachel.

• Ezra Jennings proposes an experiment.

• Godfrey Ablewhite is murdered.

Rachel Verinder• Rachel Verinder stands at the center of

The Moonstone's plot, yet never speaks her own narrative.

• Rachel's main conflict in the novel is an internal one: the evidence of her senses, which tell her that Franklin Blake stole her diamond and lied about it, must combat her passionate feelings of love and trust in Franklin.

Franklin Blake• Franklin is he who has asked all of the narrators

for their contributions and who organizes them as editor.

• Franklin's main conflict is in internal one similar to Rachel's. He must reconcile the objective fact of the evidence, which points to him as the thief,with his subjective opinion and memory that he did not steal the diamond.

Godfrey Ablewhite• At the beginning of The Moonstone,

Godfrey Ablewhite seems to be everything that Franklin Blake isn't. Godfrey is tall, conventionally good- looking, religious-minded, educated in England, and has good financial standing.

• He has been leading a double life and all of the qualities (except his good looks), which had made him seem a more attractive partner for Rachel than Franklin, turn out to be lies.

So whether you're interested in the history of British colonialism in India, or just like a good mystery, you'll love The Moonstone.