TRANSATLANTIC DIGITAL MOONSTONE PROJECT: FIRST PERIOD PART X

Wilkie Collin’s novel The Moonstone (1868) was serialized simultaneously in both the United Kingdom in All the Year Round and Harper’s Weekly in the United States of America. The narrative was consistent in both publications, but what was included in each issue varied. All the Year Round featured more poems and short shorts which catered to Charles Dicken’s Literary Journal. Harper’s Weekly features more than just short stories with the addition of images, advertisements, and other columns of varying genres. Harper’s Weekly wanted to reach a broader audience with material that expands on the different social levels.   

Three years before this issue was published was the end of the American Civil War. The difference in content between Harper’s Weekly and All the Year Round shows the ideology behind the countries at the time. With the United States using Harper’s Weekly as a way to report the political ideology through excerpts on the government, this was missing in All the Year Round due to Britain not needing this type of endorsement. Molly Knox Leverenz argues that “Harper’s Weekly participated in an already-existent, vibrant transatlantic discourse through a variety of means, including reports on international events, illustrations of international places and persons” (21) builds on the idea of the United States trying to build a new sense of identity. While the lack of government ideology was missing in All the Year Round, it allowed for a better focus on more narrative texts.   

In context with The Moonstone chapter X and with Harper’s Weekly, this exhibit will explore the idea of how the United States uses weekly serialization to build a national identity after the crisis of a civil war that tore the country apart. The conversations that take place in chapter X parallels the contents of this issue of Harper’s and why it differs from All the Year Round in Britain.    

Works Cited

All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal 1 Feb. 1868. 453-458. Print.

Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization 1 Feb. 1868. 65-80. Print. 

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, pp. 21–44.