The Moonstone

The first World's Classics were introduced by some of the greatest writers of their day, including Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot. In these hardback editions, contemporary novelists including A.S. Byatt and Joyce Carol Oates introduce their favourite classics in original pocketbook size. Echoing the original World's Classics series, the books are produced to gift-book standard with stitched binding, head and tail bands, printed on 60msg paper and featuring matt laminated jackets in a "retro-look" design. Here, P.D. James provides an introduction to one of the greatest mystery novels in English literature, Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone". The Moonstone is an enormous diamond plundered from an Indian shrine after the Siege of Seringapatam. Given to Miss Verinder on her 18th birthday, it mysteriously disappears that very night. Combining a teasing plot with a vivid portrait of Victorian England, Collins has his characters reveal themselves - and the solution to the mystery - by telling their own stories.