ABSTRACT
The impact of Thomas De Quincey writings on the history of crime and detective fiction is widely recognized. The renewal of interest in the 1821 Confessions that provoked De Quincey to revise it in 1856 arose from several sources. The Moonstone, serialized in Charles Dickens's All the Year Round beginning in January 1868, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, appearing in six install-ments beginning in April 1870 and left unfinished at Dickens's death months later, mark a turning point in the history of crime and detective fiction. According to Christopher Herbert, Dickens had remarked to a visitor in 1869, while working on Drood, that of the books people most admired De Quincey works were among his 'especial favorites'. In 1868, when The Moonstone began its serialization, readers would have imagined scenes like these in light of widely disseminated newspaper accounts and memoirs describing sepoys murdering innocent English women and children in their homes, sometimes after treacherous professions of loyalty.
