The Transatlantic Moonstone

On two sides of the atlantic ocean are two different countries, each with their own culture, practices and mindset. So when the same story is released simultaneously on both sides of the ocean these differences will crop up in such things as the way they display the releases of this story. The Moonstone was released in Britain in the All The Year Round publication and in the United States through the Harper’s Weekly publication. While the text itself is the same, the decisions of what to include with each chapter, such as illustrations (or lack thereof), advertisements, and even what stories or poems release with them.

So how does these differences highlight the differences between the British and the Americans? The differences themselves start with the most obvious in which “the American serial as "richly illustrated."” (Leighton and Surridge, 207). At the start of every publication for the Moonstone, Harper’s weekly includes several pictures of some of the events of the chapters of that week. In the All the Year Round version of the publication, there is instead just text and a consistent quote of Shakespeare to kick off the chapter. The sizes of the publications is also significant as the Harper’s Magazine printing is much larger than All the Year Round, with All the Year Round pages being around the same as a regular book page size, and Harper’s being closer to that of a newspaper.

The differences between the two publications of the moonstone that come from the different cultures from these facts can be attributed to the cultural and historical connection to the story that the readers would need to connect to the story themselves. The British readers of the time had a closer tie to the story, one only reinforced by the quote of Shakespeare to draw them into the story. The American readers however have less of a tie to this narrative and literary history, thus the use of pictures to draw the readers into the stories within instead. 

Works cited

LEIGHTON, MARY ELIZABETH, and LISA 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. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27760229.