The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of documents), generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. The story was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are considered Wilkie Collins' best novels. Besides creating many of the ground rules of the detective novel, The Moonstone also reflected Collins' enlightened social attitudes in his treatment of the servants in the novel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moonstone
The author, William Wilkie Collins (1824 – 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale, and No Name. Collins's works were classified at the time as "sensation novels," a genre seen nowadays as the precursor to detective and suspense fiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkie_Collins
