Onto The Moonstone...

1 August 2018: "We have already had specimens, as many as are desirable, of what the detective policeman can do for the enlivenment of literature: and it is into the hands of the literary Detective that this school of story-telling must inevitably fall at last.” --Margaret Oliphant, writing about The Woman in White in 1862.

My preparation for my nineteenth-century British novel class has gotten as far as The Moonstone. An article I read today pointed out that when Oliphant wrote those words, The Moonstone--often called the first great detective novel--hadn't even been published yet. Beyond being intrigued by that, I also laughed to myself thinking about what Oliphant would say about our contemporary obsession with all things forensic.