The same day as Franklin’s arrival, three Indian men who appear to be traveling magicians come to the Verinder estate, presumably looking for a place to stay, which Betteredge’s daughter Penelope plans to give them. After some digressions, he recounts the multi-talented but spendthrift “universal genius” Franklin Blake’s return to England at the age of 25, after more than a decade living and attending schools in Europe, to which his eccentric father had sent him.

Franklin Blake (a cousin of Rachel Verinder) are putting together a written record of the Diamond’s theft. It is narrated by the Verinders’ butler Gabriel Betteredge, who begins with a quote from his favorite book, Robinson Crusoe, and goes on to explain that the family lawyer Mr. The novel’s long first section is set in Yorkshire in 1848, at the residence of the Lady Julia Verinder and her wealthy family. When the temple was plundered in the 11th century, the stone’s protectors moved it to the holy city from Benares, where the god Vishnu commanded them and their descendants to guard it “to the end of the generations of men.” In the 18th century, a Mughal emperor had the Diamond stolen, and in 1799, the devilish Herncastle stole it from Seringapatnam, in the process killing a man who promised that “The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!” The anonymous narrator begins by tracing the Moonstone’s history, which begins in the ancient temple of Somnauth, where the Diamond was embedded in the head of a statue of the Hindu moon god. The novel begins in India, with a Prologue written by an anonymous member of the Verinder family, a cousin and fellow soldier to the Colonel John Herncastle.

The moonstone novel