"When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else."

The Moonstone, a yellow diamond looted from an Indian temple and believed to bring bad luck to its owner, is bequeathed to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That very night the priceless stone is stolen again and when Sergeant Cuff is brought in to investigate the crime, he soon realizes that no one in Rachel's household is above suspicion. Hailed by T. S. Eliot as "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels," The...

The Edwardian era saw a remarkable outpouring of fiction, much of which we don't normally think of as Edwardian. There were major works such as Conrad's Lord Jim and Nostromo, Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, and D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. Children's literature saw such marvelous books as Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, and there were many popular classics as well, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Now, in Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion, readers have an...

Though Kipling always denied any critical intent, his letters, speeches and stories are full of comments on writing and writers. This collection, including many previously unpublished private letters and papers, reveal a mind intensely concerned with questions of literary value. Kipling became an important spokesperson for segments of the reading public central to Britain's imperial expansion. He profoundly influenced English literary language and our perception of English national character. This book offers new access to and understanding of the private and public history of a still...