Introduction

Sabina Fazli
Indian Diamonds in Victorian Fiction
Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone,
Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds,
R. L. Stevenson’s “The Rajah’s Diamond”
and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four
Introduction
If there is one object in nature, more interesting to human beings than another, it is the
Diamond. Why this should be so, Philosophy might perhaps be able to tell if we consulted
her; but it is not surprising that Poetry, who is always more or less inclined to superstition,
should refer the influence of the stone over our judgments and imaginations to some
occult talismanic power working upon us like fascination. (L.R. 49)
The arrival of the Koh-i-Noor in England incited widespread interest, and the
fascination with the diamond which the anonymous writer of the 1849 article
“The Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of Light” expresses is by no means short-lived.
James Bond is equally amazed a hundred years later in Ian Fleming’s novel Diamonds
are Forever:
Now he could understand the passion that diamonds had inspired through
the centuries, the almost sexual love they aroused among those who han-