Introduction

106
Sabina Fazli
by Patrick Brantlinger articulates the fears surrounding the contact with the colonies
towards the end of the nineteenth century. Images of contamination and
invasion inform the description of diamonds as well as the depiction of opium,
another ambiguous colonial product, which already appears alongside the Moonstone.
Both the Oriental drug and the diamonds are perceived as uncanny.
The texts I will rely on for in-depth analysis are Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone,
Robert Louis Stevenson “The Rajah’s Diamond”, Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace
Diamonds and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four. My criteria for choosing
these texts are their focus on identifiably Indian diamonds as the focus of crime.
The Moonstone first appeared in serialised form in Charles Dickens’ All the Year
Round in 1868. It is conceived as an epistolary novel in which the theft of the
Moonstone in India, its bequest and second theft in England and its return to
India are narrated in letters and diary entries assembled to document and solve the
crimes. The Moonstone has attracted a lot of critical attention and has been variously
evaluated. T.S. Eliot famously hailed it as the “first and greatest of English detective
novels” (Eliot 377, qtd. from Gruner 127) while Brantlinger complained of its
“hole in the middle” thus obsessively circling a void (Brantlinger “What is ‘Sensational’”
22, qtd. in Hennelly 28). John R. Reed proposed the first postcolonial
analysis of The Moonstone (Free 345) and reads the novel as an indictment of imperialism
(Reed 281).
The Eustace Diamonds (serialised 1871-1873) by Anthony Trollope presents a
decidedly domestic take on the plot of The Moonstone and has even been called a
“parody” (Milley 656) or mere rewriting of the former (Daly 69). Lizzie Eustace
insists on keeping her deceased husband’s diamonds while the Eustace family’s
lawyers try to reclaim them for his family. At the bottom of the dispute is the
diamonds’ legal status as either heirloom or paraphernalia. While Lizzie is in possession
of the diamonds, she is on the one hand an eligible match due to her
wealth, but on the other hand her retention of the diamonds gives rise to rumours.
At an inn the diamonds’ box is stolen; Lizzie keeps it from the police that the box
had been empty, and that she is still in possession of the diamonds. In a second
burglary, her diamonds are really stolen and it transpires that she has lied. This
damage to her reputation appals all her former suitors, and she has to marry below
her station. Although Trollope’s novel is often classed as domestic, it has colonial
connections. The Eustace diamonds are stated to come from Golconda, the famous
Indian mines (Trollope 138), and they appear in England in 1799, the year
of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War which is also the site of the plundering of the
Moonstone (Daly 75). In a sub-plot another legal case concerning stolen property
complements Lizzie’s endeavours to keep the diamonds: An Indian prince, the
fictional Sawab of Mygawb, claims back his land, and two of Lizzie’s suitors are
engaged in the case on opposite sides.
In 1875, a short-story in two instalments appeared in Charles Dickens’ All the
Year Round, by an anonymous contributor. It is called “The Rajah’s Diamond” and