The Moonstone (Limited Edition)

Wilkie Collins

Illustrated by Juan Esteban Rodríguez

Introduced by Val McDermid

Limited to 750 hand-numbered copies

The first great English detective novel, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone is presented in a Folio Society limited edition of 750 numbered copies. Featuring a fascinating introduction by Val McDermid and new illustrations by Juan Esteban Rodríguez, each copy has been signed by both the introducer and the illustrator.

‘The first, the longest and the best of modern, English detective novels.’

T. S. Eliot

A priceless gem, a diamond from India imbued with religious significance, is stolen on the very night it is given as an eighteenth birthday present to a captivating heiress; and so the mystery begins. The rules for the golden age of crime novels are formed in the pages of The Moonstone – an English country house, a complex cast of characters, the bungling local constabulary, a celebrated sleuth and the reconstruction of the crime. Collins’ intricate, ingenious plot combines suspense, drama and romance with an astute commentary on society in a richly humorous novel told through a series of narratives related by a variety of voices.

Doyenne of crime writing, Val McDermid has contributed a superb new introduction exploring her fascination with The Moonstone and charting its influence on the detective fiction genre, whilst Juan Esteban Rodríguez’ atmospheric illustrations, with a restrained palette redolent of early photographs, perfectly complement the novel. Both the introducer and the illustrator have signed each hand-numbered copy. Quarter-bound in indigo leather blocked in gold foils and with cloth sides printed with a panoramic view of Lady Verinder’s country house, this is the ideal edition in which to uncover the mystery of the missing diamond.

PRODUCTION DETAILS

Letterpress-printed limitation tip signed by Val McDermid and Juan Esteban Rodríguez 

Quarter-bound in indigo leather blocked in gold foils

Cloth-covered sides printed with design by the artist

Set in Portrait printed on Munken Pure paper 

536 pages  

10 illustrations including 2 double-page spreads printed on Natural Evolution Ivory paper  

Gilded page tops 

Ribbon marker 

Endpapers printed with a design in gold ink on Sirio paper  

Cloth-covered slipcase blocked in gold foils 

10˝ x 7˝

SERIAL SENSATION

‘So, as with all the best stories, in the end it’s character that brings us back to a book, that draws us in and makes its mark on us.’

Val McDermid, from her Introduction

First published in 1868 in 32 instalments, in Charles Dickens’ All the Year Round in the UK and in Harper’s Weekly in the US, The Moonstone was an immediate sensation and remains hugely influential on writers of detective fiction. As Val McDermid notes in her introduction, few crime and mystery novels shine as brightly and ‘to find out how they do it, the reader must turn to the motherlode and listen to the voices that Wilkie Collins summoned up for us’.

BIOGRAPHIES

About Wilkie Collins

Born in London in 1824, Wilkie Collins was apprenticed in the tea trade and studied for the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn before turning to writing. Hugely successful during his lifetime, he is now best known for his novels The Woman in White and The Moonstone. Collins was a close companion of Charles Dickens and a prolific author of plays, novels, short stories and journalism. A liberal Christian who supported two households but never married, Collins exposed the hypocrisies and social abuses of Victorian society in much of his later work. Blighted with ill health, relieved by large doses of laudanum, he died of a paralytic stroke in 1889. 

About Val McDermid

Val McDermid read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, graduating in 1972 after which she began her award-winning career in journalism. Her first novel, Report for Murder, was published by the Women’s Press in 1987, following which she quit newspapers to write full-time in 1991. She has published short story collections, non-fiction books, a graphic novel and a children’s book, as well as writing for the theatre and radio. Past Lying (2023) is her 39th novel. McDermid has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger, the LA Times Book of the Year Award and the Grand Prix des Romans D’Aventure. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and is lead singer of the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers. For The Folio Society, she has written introductions for The Singing Sands, Northanger Abbey and The Moonstone limited edition.

About Juan Esteban Rodríguez

Juan Esteban Rodríguez works as a freelance illustrator in Valencia, Spain. His illustrations have been published through a variety of projects, from film posters and ad campaigns to editorials and book covers. Clients include Lucasfilm, Warner Brothers, Scientific American and Foreign Affairs magazine. For The Folio Society, Esteban Rodríguez has illustrated True Grit by Charles Portis as well as Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone.