Sherlock Holmes’s Precursors: Eccentrics, Amateur Sleuths and Oriental Mysteries in Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins is undeniably one of the initiators of the detective novel. The role he played in creating the new form was famously consecrated by T. S. Eliot, who defined The Moonstone (1868) as “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels”. In later decades of the twentieth century, scholars have widely assessed the contribution Collins gave to the launch and development of the detective genre. As Robert Ashley declared in 1960, Collins “should have to his credit..