The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (Folio Society, 1951 — Striking Hindu Deity Dust Jacket)
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (Folio Society, 1951 — Striking Hindu Deity Dust Jacket)
This Folio Society edition of The Moonstone (1951) is of interest to collectors of Wilkie Collins, Victorian detective fiction, early Folio Society editions, and books with striking period illustration, widely regarded as the first full-length detective novel in the English language.
About: Very Good copy in the original blue cloth binding with the striking Folio Society dust jacket - dark teal ground with a dramatic pink multi-armed Hindu deity (Shiva) figure dominating the front panel, bold white THE MOONSTONE lettering above and BY WILKIE COLLINS below; jacket with chipping and loss to the head of the spine; front panel illustration intact and displaying with great visual impact; binding firm and square; pages with age toning consistent with the period; a charming woodcut Ex Libris bookplate to the front pastedown — pastoral scene with open book, wheat sheaves, and flowers, with manuscript name below; pencil inscription to the front free endpaper; rear panel advertising The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard by Anatole France (translated by Lafcadio Hearn, with 16 Lithographs by Hope-Read, 16s. Net) - a standard Folio Society companion title promotion.
Details:
- Title: The Moonstone
- Author: Wilkie Collins
- Publisher: The Folio Society, London
- Publication Date: 1951
- Binding: Hardcover - original blue cloth
- Condition: Very Good (pages with age toning; binding firm and square)
- Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good (chipping and loss to spine head; front panel illustration intact and vivid)
- Provenance: Woodcut Ex Libris bookplate to front pastedown; pencil inscription to front free endpaper
Synopsis: Folio Society, London 1951; striking dark teal dust jacket with dramatic pink Hindu deity illustration; jacket present with chipping to spine head, front panel vivid and intact; woodcut Ex Libris bookplate and pencil inscription; an early and characterful Folio Society edition of the first detective novel in the English language.
Review: Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, first published in 1868, is universally acknowledged as the first full-length detective novel in the English language — the prototype from which all subsequent detective fiction descends. The novel's central mystery, the disappearance of a fabulous Indian diamond from an English country house, is narrated through multiple witnesses in a technique of extraordinary sophistication, anticipating the methods of Agatha Christie and the entire tradition of the classic mystery novel by half a century. T.S. Eliot called it “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels.” This 1951 Folio Society edition — one of the Society's earliest publications, founded only in 1947 — in its vivid teal and pink jacket with the dramatic Hindu deity evoking the diamond's Indian origins, is a handsome and historically significant copy of one of the most important novels in English literary history.