Wilkie Collins’ novel, The Moonstone (1868), was published both in the United Kingdom’s magazine, All the Year Round, and the United States magazine, Harper’s Weekly. In All the Year Round it is strictly represented as a text edition, whereas in Harper’s Weekly it is illustrated as well as textually produced. How these two different productions of the text affect the reading created is widely debated. In Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge’s article, “The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated Serial in Harper’s Weekly,” they argue that the illustrations found in the American magazine heighten the texts sensationalism, further complicate the narrative structure, and shift its treatment of gender, disability, class and race (207).
In this exhibit, I will be building on part of their argument. That is, how the illustrations in Harper’s Weekly interact with the narrative structure to create an entirely different narrative than that found in All the Year Round. These images take away the creative process of the reader, instead forcing them to interpret the text in the same way. What these illustrations choose to recognize in the narrative impacts how the text is read, whereas in All the Year Round, the text is a stand-alone narrative, thus the reader is free to interpret the mystery in their own unique way.
Works Cited
All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal. Edited by Charles Dickens, vol. 19, Chapman & Hall, 1868, London, p. 535.
Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Harper & Brothers, 1868, New York, pp. 311-325.
Leighton, Mary Elizabeth, and Lisa A. Surridge. “The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated Serial in Harper's Weekly.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 42, no. 3, 2009, pp. 207–243.