The Moonstone

The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century, British, epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. Others consider the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin in such tales as The Murders in the Rue Morgue as providing a model for Collins.

The Moonstone was originally serialized in Charles Dickens's magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are considered Wilkie Collins' best novels. Besides creating many of the ground rules for the detective novel, "The Moonstone" also reflected Collins' enlightened social views in his treatment of the Indians and the servants in the novel. Collins adapted "The Moonstone" for the stage in 1877, but the production ran only two months.

— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.