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The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins is a novel published in 1868. A cursed Indian diamond, stolen during a colonial siege, arrives as an inheritance for young Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That night, the precious stone vanishes from her bedroom, launching a complex investigation involving suspicious servants, mysterious Indian priests, and shocking betrayals. This pioneering detective story unfolds through multiple narrators, each revealing new layers of deception as they race to solve the theft and recover the legendary gem. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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THE MOONSTONE

A Romance

by Wilkie Collins

Contents

PROLOGUE

THE STORY

FOURTH NARRATIVE

FIFTH NARRATIVE

SEVENTH NARRATIVE

EIGHTH NARRATIVE

PROLOGUE

THE STORMING OF SERINGAPATAM (1799):

(Extracted from a Family Paper.)

I

I address these lines—written in India—to my relatives in England.

My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle. The reserve which I have hitherto maintained in this matter has been misinterpreted by members of my family whose good opinion I cannot consent to forfeit. I request them to suspend their decision until they have read my narrative. And I declare, on my word of honour,

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About This Edition

This edition of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 194,984 words — about 975 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

On Libreya, the text has been carefully formatted for comfortable reading on any screen — with consistent chapter navigation, adjustable font sizes, and four reading themes: light, sepia, dark, and night mode. Your reading position is saved automatically when you sign in, so you can pick up exactly where you left off across any device. The original text has not been altered in any way; what you read here is the same work as it appeared in its original published form.

About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.

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