Summary

All The Year Round places The Moonstone in the front of its publication, potentially giving readers a consideration of the text initially free of any contextual impositions. However, the chapters are followed by non-fiction pieces such as “Among Russian Peasantry” and "The English Gentleman's Own Profession", which may have shifted The Moonstone into a piece seen as part of a larger discussion of the English class system. While sympathy for Miss Clack is certainly not engendered by Collins’ writing, the writing of these pieces might have amplified her position as an Other in the text relative to the upper-class characters around whom the story revolves. In addition, the exoticization of Russia and racialism present here may have added to the national and racial tendencies already present in the text of The Moonstone.

Meanwhile, in “Illustrating The Moonstone in America: Harper’s Weekly and Transatlantic Introspection”, Molly Knox Leverenz notes that the illustrations provided in Harper’s Weekly during The Moonstone’s initial run in America serve to amplify “an American perspective on English imperialism… Reconstruction and its eye toward global expansion” (23). Demonstrating Leverenz’s point, the April 18th issue focuses particularly on considerations of American Reconstruction following the Civil War as the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson was underway at the time. Articles and illustrations preceding The Moonstone focus almost exclusively on the impeachment proceedings. Along with the illustrations provided for The Moonstone, this context would have placed particular focus on the legalistic debate performed by Miss Clack and the lawyer Mr. Bruff and the guilt of Godfrey Ablewhite in comparison to the innocence of Andrew Johnson.

Works Cited

All The Year Round, Vol. 469, 18 April 1868.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Oxford University Press, New York, 1999.

Harper's Weekly, Harper and Brothers, 18 April 1868.

Leverenz, Molly Knox. "Illustrating The Moonstone in America: Harper’s Weekly and Transatlantic Introspection." American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism, vol. 24 no. 1, 2014, p. 21-44.