The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is part of the genre of sensation fiction. Sensation fiction is “noted for spectacular effects and displays of intense emotion” (Rubery). Sensation fiction often “involved scandalous events including murder, adultery, bigamy, fraud, madness, and sexual deviance often perpetrated by seemingly moral and upright individuals in familiar domestic settings” (Rubery). A large aspect of The Moonstone is the idea of the exotic other, as the central concern of the novel is the Moonstone, which is a diamond that Britain obtained through the colonization of India. The exoticism of The Moonstone heightens the other aspects of it being a sensation novel, as it adds even more intrigue and mystery to an already mysterious plot.
The Moonstone was published in serial magazines in both England and the United States of America. In England it was published in the weekly magazine of All the Year Round, while the USA published it in Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. All the Year Round was a collection of sections of novels and essays, while Harper’s Weekly consisted of news articles, opinion pieces, advertisements, jokes, novel sections and more. Regarding The Moonstone, the biggest difference between All the Year Round and Harper’s Weekly is that Harper’s Weekly has illustrations to accompany the story, while All The Year Round is just text.
The images in Harper’s Weekly play a key role in how one would read the text. Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge argue that “The Harper’s illustrations formed an intrinsic part of the American Moonstone, heightening the text’s sensationalism, complicating its already intricate narrative structure, and shifting its treatment of gender, disability, class, and race” (Leighton and Surridge, 207). While this is true, it’s not just the illustrations found within The Moonstone that heightens the text’s sensationalism. Other media found in Harper’s Weekly outside of The Moonstone romanticize the idea of exploration and travelling, which adds to the themes of exoticism already found in The Moonstone. Thus, if one looks at not only the images in The Moonstone, but the other forms of media surrounding The Moonstone, it becomes clear that exoticism is amplified throughout the entirety of Harper’s Weekly, not just in the images found in The Moonstone, which heightens the sensationalism of the novel. While Harper's Weekly heightens the sensationalism, All the Year Round does the opposite, as its other sources offer a realistic look at the dangers of exploration and colonialism.
Bibliography:
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.
Rubery, Matthew. “Sensation Fiction.” Oxford Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, 2 Mar. 2011, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199799558/obo-9780199799558-0062.xml.