Harpers Weekly newspaper etchings from 1868, an American political magazine featuring the political cartoonist, Thomas Nast The Moonstone 1868 by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel, generally considered the first full length detective novel in the English language The Moonstone and the Woman in White are widely 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.