Wilkie Collins-The Moonstone

Cafe Society
1

I’ve not finished it, so, please, no spoilers.

But, is everything he wrote this good? :slight_smile:

2

I’ve only read The Moonstone and The Woman in White, and both are about equally good.

Which is to say VERY!

I love his way with accents and dialects. I have no idea if it is accurate to the times, or if it’s broad caricature, but it feels right.

I absolutely love the “Sherlock Holmes” character in The Moonstone. Is it known if Conan Doyle drew any inspiration from this book?

ETA; there were some “Masterpiece Theatre” tv adaptations of these two books, and they were quite good also. Reasonably true to the books, with some changes, mostly due to length. (The guy who played Count Fosco seemed completely wrong. Still, while his presentation was different from how the book portrays him, someone seeing the show without having read the book would find the presentation entirely admirable and creditable. We need to give actors some latitude for individual interpretation!)

3

Thanks, Trinopus!

4

Everything I’ve seen/heard has these two as his best works, Armadale and No Name as second-tier, and everything else somewhere below that.

I read Armadale not too long ago. Not bad at all, though longer and more meandering than I might have liked.

I don’t know about that, but The Moonstone is often cited as the first detective novel.

5

The Moonstone is 1868, *A Study in Scarlet *is 1887. However, from what I’ve heard, Doyle mostly based Holmes on a real-life man, Dr. Joseph Bell.

6

I wasn’t a huge fan of The Moonstone but I loved The Woman in White.

7

IMO No Name is better than Armadale which I found rather hard work, with a distinctly faulty denouement. however Armadale has a hero of mixed race which is unusual if not unique for novels of that time.

I’ve read quite a few of his lesser novels, opinion of them is coloured by Swinburne’s comment: “What brought good Wilkie’s genius nigh perdition? / Some demon whispered—'Wilkie! have a mission.”[22] which I do not think is entirely fair. The aforementioned No Name was certainly written with social injustice in mind – the position of illegitimate children as to inheritance and status. In fact Collins’ struggle with increasing ill health and subsequent laudanum addiction contributed to the uneven quality of his work also.