Mooning over 'The Moonstone'

Bony Pete contest coordinator Chris Bullock chose Wilkie Collins'  The Moonstone as his Alberta book.

Now, as we all know, Wilie Collins was not an Albertan--but Broadview Press, which released this edition of The Moonstone and donated this copy to the Bloody Words promotion, is an Alberta publisher. Steve Farmer, the editor, is in the English Department at Arizona State.

The Broadview edition of The Moonstone got rave reviews for the commentary and supporting materials that Steve Farmer provided. The annotation of the text has been applauded, as has the inclusion of the full text of Collins' dramatic adaptation of the novel. A reader who wants to delve deeply into this novel will certainly find the commentary and the appendices to be enormously useful.

Broadview offers a number of classic mysteries, all with the commentaries and supporting materials that help the reader to full understand the novels in their own context. Other works in this series include Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles; and Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White.

Anne Jayne

The Sign of Four - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of Four
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Edited by Shafquat Towheed

Arthur Conan Doyle’s second Sherlock Holmes novel is both a detective story and an imperial romance. Ostensibly the story of Mary Morstan, a beautiful young woman enlisting the help of Holmes to find her vanished father and solve the mystery of her receipt of a perfect pearl on the same date each year, it gradually uncovers a tale of treachery and human greed. The action audaciously ranges from penal settlements on the Andaman Islands to the suburban comfort of south London, and from the opium-fuelled violence of Agra Fort during the ‘Indian Mutiny’ to the cocaine-induced contemplation of Holmes’ own Baker Street.”

Donated by Broadview Press

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins
Edited by Steve Farmer

Intrigue, investigations, thievery, drugs, and murder all make an appearance in Wilkie Collins’ classic whodunit, The Moonstone. (it) .  Published in serial form in 1868, it was inspired in part by a spectacular murder case widely reported in the early 1860’s. Collins’ story revolves around a diamond stolen from a Hindu holy place. On her 18th birthday, Rachel Verinder receives the diamond, but by the following morning the stone has been stolen again. As the story unravels through multiple eye-witness accounts, the elderly Sergeant Cuff – with a face “sharp as a hatchet” – looks for the culprit.”

(The play appears as an appendix to that edition)

Donated by Broadview Press