The prologue of The Moonstone prepares us for both the historical background of the novel and the narrative technique. The setting of the opening and closing of the novel is India—the prologue is specifically about events on Indian soil, as well as being itself "written in India." Though the novel will follow the theft of the diamond from a household in England, the prologue reminds us that the diamond was stolen first and foremost from Indians by an Englishman. The Battle of Seringapatam is an actual historical event in the British occupation of India. The battle is significant because it reinforced the predominance of the East India Company at the time and, subsequently, British sovereignty in India throughout the nineteenth century when Wilkie Collins was writing. The Prologue is unequivocal about the unethical quality of John Herncastle's violent acts and theft of a spiritually significant object, and this can be read, by extension, as a condemnation of British treatment of occupied India.
Both the prologue and the opening chapters of the novel call attention to themselves as written documents. The Moonstone has no single narrator, and no omniscient, third-person narration that can reveal everyone's thoughts. Instead, the novel consists of over a dozen individual testimonies written by various characters involved with the diamond or the Verinder family. These characters, in turn, rely on other written documents that are often reproduced within the narrative (though some are not reproduced, as is the case with Penelope's diary). Franklin Blake, nephew to Lady Verinder, serves as the "editor" of the various testimonies and the force behind the project of taking them all down in writing. Blake suggests "we should all write the story of the Moonstone in turn—as far as our own personal experience extends and no farther." This technique of narration is well suited to the genre of detective fiction, whereby more and more information is gathered through various witnesses, and all cannot be revealed to us at once
