Browse Exhibits (55 total)

The character archetype of the jungle girl has made many appearances in comic publications through the years. The bulk comes from the 1940s to 1957, where at least 10 serializations feature a jungle girl as the lead character. This exhibit will examine the origins of the archetype in fiction and how it translated into the comic medium. It will be further examining the character type evolution over the 15-year span and the reasons for the changes or lack of. This continues to the effects the comic code had on the genre and the legacy it has in modern times.

The first forest-dwelling character to come out of fiction is from W. H. Hudson’s novel Green Mansion. The character Rima, already has some of the qualities familiar with the archetype incomes with her ability to communicate with animals. She is described as:

Small, not above four feet six or seven inches in height, in figure slim, with delicately shaped little hands and feet.  Her feet were bare, and her only garment was a slight chemise-shaped dress reaching below her knees, of a whitish-grey colour, with a faint lustre as of a silky material. Her hair was very wonderful; it was loose and abundant, and seemed wavy or curly, falling in a cloud on her shoulders and arms.  Dark it appeared, but the precise tint was indeterminable, as was that of her skin, which looked neither brown nor white. (Hudson 68)

Using this description as the baseline to examine the jungle heroines of the 1940s and beyond, it can be determined if artists are using this as a reference, or the creation is something completely new.   

From there, it can be further examined to see if the archetype goes under and change throughout the years and whether that is due to the change in narrative or merely what is being consumed.   

Works Cited 

Hudson, W. H. Green Mansion. E. P. Dutton, 1903. 

Miss Clack continues to provide her narrative of events in London as Collins’ Second Period continues through Chapter III and into the beginning of Chapter IV. This section originally occupied the editions of All The Year Round and Harper’s Weekly released on April 18, 1868. 

Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone presents a narrative as multi-faceted as its serialization in Harper’s Weekly and All the Year Round. In Harper’s, the surrounding illustrations, advertisements, and political commentary allow for a broader scope of interpretation of The Moonstone’s characters and events. Likewise, All The Year Round situates its instalments of The Moonstone within compilations of creative and non-fiction texts, presenting equal opportunity for varied interpretation without the influence of illustrations. In both periodicals, the depiction of characters within The Moonstone are significantly influenced by the spatial positioning of the text itself.

Consequently, Victorian periodicals offer a breadth of opportunity for analysis. Barbara Korte examines the relationship between popular Victorian magazines and ideas surrounding heroic figures, arguing that periodicals utilized depictions of heroism to emphasize the significance of particular morals or values. While the periodicals differ in intended audiences, stylistic characteristics, and contribution to social discourse (182), Korte demonstrates how concerns surrounding hero “worship” versus “admiration” are consistently connected to readers’ emotional engagement with heroic figures. Korte further emphasizes the value placed on “moral heroism” and the distinction between “true” and “false” heroes.

Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge analyze the illustrations in the Harper’s Weekly publication of The Moonstone, arguing that the addition of illustrations directly inform the narrative, just as they inform an individual reader’s interpretation of the multi-faceted text (222). In this way, the illustrations equally contribute to and represent the many possible layers of interpretation within The Moonstone itself.

Surridge and Leighton’s ideas surrounding the relationship between illustrations and the hermeneutic activity (222) of readers can be similarly applied to the Victorian periodical’s depiction of heroism. Specifically, the penultimate instalment of The Moonstone constructs an image of heroism that is reinforced by the layers of spatial, visual, and textual positioning in Harper’s and All the Year Round. Harper’s Weekly bookends the narrative of The Moonstone with the physical layout of articles and illustrations to depict Sergeant Cuff and Gooseberry as ‘true heroes’ and Godfrey as a ‘false hero.’ Comparatively, All the Year Round concludes with commentary on the heroism in three fairy tales, defining proper “heroic character” after an instalment of The Moonstone wherein the nature of heroic character is questioned. In this way, Harper’s and All the Year Round utilize the spatial positioning of preceding and succeeding material to bookend The Moonstone and reiterate the ideals of the heroic characters they construct.

Works Cited

All The Year Round: A Weekly Journal, 1 Aug. 1868.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 1 Aug. 1868.

Korte, Barbara. “On Heroes and Hero Worship: Regimes of Emotional Investment in Mid-Victorian Popular Magazines.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 2016, pp. 181-201. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vpr.2016.0012.

Leighton, Mary Elizabeth & Surridge, Lisa. “The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated
Serial in Harper's Weekly.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 42, no. 3, 2009, pp. 207-243. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vpr.0.0083.

Although Wilkie Collins’ novel The Moonstone was published simultaneously in the United Kingdom and the United States of America through serialization, All the Year Round and Harper’s Weekly respectively, the presentation of the novel differs greatly between the two publications. Recent scholarship has argued for the evaluation of the difference in content and form on both sides of the Atlantic, using what Linda Hughes refers to as ‘sideways reading’ across genre to analyze Victorian literature, in this case on both sides of the Atlantic.

The twelfth weekly instalment begins on chapter XXI and spans partway through chapter XXII and is comprised of Sargeant Cuff’s investigation of the Moonstone in the wake of Rosanna Spearman’s suicide. During a meeting with Lady Verinder, Cuff reveals his suspicion of Rachel’s guilt and his theory of her behaviour. Lady Verinder travels to Frizinghall to ask her daughter if she is guilty, and after having being assured that despite her mystique, Rachel has done ‘nothing to make [her] mother blush for [her]’ (Collins, 175), and Cuff is promptly fired as a result.

In Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas, Silvia Spitta argues that the misplaced object ‘causes a rift in understanding,’ that once having “lost its place in the culture that created it and that anchored its meaning,” the role of the misplaced object was to “upset European certainties” (5). While her argument is founded mostly in the appropriation of Indigenous Latin American cultural items in European museums such as headdresses, this exhibit will be discussing, through exoticism, commodification, and globalization, the narrative of justification and blame that was imported from the United Kingdom to America, as is visible in the publications that are found in Harper’s Weekly and All the Year Round, as well as how it parallels the misplacement of the diamond the Moonstone in the novel. The exhibit will also discuss the importance of objects in context and their construction via thing theory.

Works Cited

All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal. 21 March 1867, pp. 337 – 343.

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

Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. 21 March. 1868, pp. 129-144.

Hughes, Linda K. “SIDEWAYS!: Navigating the Material(ity) of Print Culture." Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 47, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1-30.

Spitta, Silvia. Misplaced Objects : Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas. U of Texas, 2009. Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Ser. in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture.

Linda Hughes has talked about the importance of “sideways reading” (1-2) and when reading Victorian texts, one should look at the surrounding texts, articles, pictures, advertisements, and so on in its original form. By doing this, the text’s meaning could change as there is cultural and historical context, but it also creates a conversation with the two or more different texts that are side-by-side.

Due to interpreting the texts in this way, the text analysis then relies on Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author theory as the texts around The Moonstone might be interpreted differently than how the author initially wrote it. As The Moonstone was written, the author’s intended interpretations of Miss. Clack could have been different, but due to the surrounding texts, the texts show her in a different light and might even paint her in a more vain and naïve character than written alone.

Due to the Death of the Author theory, the author’s intentions of the character is less relevant, while the relevance remains in the interpretation of the readers by also using the texts surrounding the first chapter narrated by Miss Clack. The texts around The Moonstone create dimension to the characters in the story, more so than the story itself provides. Miss. Clack’s character is critiqued and added to because of the surrounding illustrations, articles, and stories. The texts around the chapter create conversation around Miss Clack's Christianity and add to the comparison between her and Mr. Godfrey. 

Barthes, Roland. “Death of the Author.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch et al., W.W. Norton, 2010, pp 1322-1326.

Hughes, Linda K. "SIDEWAYS!: Navigating the Material(ity) of Print Culture." Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 47 no. 1, 2014, p. 1-30. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vpr.2014.0011.

Melissa Free in her “'Dirty Linen': Legacies of Empire in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone” thinks that Collins “by constructing a private, domestic history as simultaneously imperial collaps[es] not only home and away, but also private and public, and family and empire” (341). In this way, he deconstructs the colonial binary of the paternal colonizer and the infantile foreign colony by criticizing the domestic microcosm of colonization; namely, the Verinders, their extended family, and staff.  

However, this reading is problematic because the issue of race and The Moonstone’s audience extends beyond the colonial narrative to America. Oppression of the racial other in America, while certainly a legacy of colonialism, cannot be deconstructed the same way as with the imperial England because America itself was once a colony not a colonizer.  

Linda Hughes in her article “SIDEWAYS! : Navigating the Material(ity) of Print Culture” proposes that analysis of text should be done “sideways”, “across genres; texts opening out onto each other dialogically in and out of periodicals” (1-2). Thus, the discussion of race in The Moonstone can perhaps be elucidated by the other works published specifically in Harper’s Weekly or All the Year Round, for the American and English publics respectively. Including a sideways analysis, I argue, like Free, that the colonial hierarchy is fundamentally reversed – the racial other is paternalized and the American and English publics infantilized. However, unlike Free, this reversal and the inclusion of American race issues is not merely a deconstruction of colonial binaries but evolves beyond an anti-colonial discourse to establish a new truly familial, global relationship in which international/interracial authority is gained by setting a passive example, not by active expansionism.  

Works Cited: 

All The Year Round: A Weekly Journal, 8 Aug. 1868.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Free, Melissa. “‘Dirty Linen’: Legacies of Empire in Wilkie Collins's the Moonstone.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 48, no. 4, 2006, pp. 340–371.

Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 8 Aug. 1868.

Hughes, Linda K. “SIDEWAYS! : Navigating the Material(Ity) of Print Culture.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 47, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–30. 

The task of comparing a part of Wilkie Collins The Moonstone from both the American Harpers Weekly and the United Kingdom’s All The Year Round brought about two very different readings. One of the most apparent distinctions was the presence of photographs. While Harpers Weekly was laced with find photographs and enhanced the passage of The Moonstone, All the Year Round was completely barren from any illustration of the events taking place within the section of The Moonstone that was published. The additions of the photographs not only warranted a different read of The Moonstone as the reader was able to visualize some pivotal scenes but considered with the advertisements also present in the same issue, the two together can raise some significant questions. While All the Year Round contained no photographs, it also contained little to no advertisement at all; in fact, some of the only advertising done was to announce new works coming up by Dickens himself. In contrast, Harpers Weekly was abundant in advertisements, and this enhanced the reading of The Moonstone as the reader was swept away into a world of ads right after they would have finished a section of the novel.

Section 8 of the novel had some particularly exciting advertisements that work congruently with the ideas brought up in the direct text — notably, the very othering of Rosanna Spearmen. Rosanna is directly outed in this section, the very image is specific when it says "Sergeant Cuff Looked Attentively at our Second Housemaid – at her face when she came in; at her crooked shoulder, when she went out," (109 Collins) having this image with the caption really shows how Rosanna is singled out due to her disability. A common theme throughout this issue of Harpers Weekly is the othering of women. At the end of the paper, the reader is met with an entire column dedicated to the “Witch Finder,” or the “Hunted Maid of Salem,” here the reader can hear about the gruesome and horrifying Salem Witchcraft Trials. Women were othered due to any abnormality, including physical, much like Rosanna. None of these ideas are prominent in All the Year Round.

The male dominance is more prevalent as articles that follow The Moonstone section are ones about eating horse meat or having affairs with foreign countries.

Harpers Weekly creates a narrative surrounding the othering of Rosanna, while all the year-round creates a male-dominated narrative where Sergeant Cuff is the focal point. Rosanna is almost an afterthought as the lack of images, and the influx of male-centred short stories surround Section 8, Chapters 13, and 14 of The Moonstone.

Comparing the two original publications of Wilkie Collins’ 1868 novel, The Moonstone, it is clear that although released at the same time, the periodicals could not be more different. As a result, the significance of Collins’ novel, released in 32 segments, can be interpreted in entirely different contexts despite the chapters being exactly the same. Charles Dickens' All the Year Round published the novel, unillustrated, in the United Kingdom. In the United States of America, Harper’s Weekly was responsible for the story’s release in their beautifully illustrated periodical, complete with jokes and satirical articles. Although, at first, the illustrations seem to add supplementary depth to the chapters, comparing them to the other sources the editors chose for the issue proves that images may not always be reliable, especially when reading detective fiction.

Elizabeth Anderman, associate director of University of Boulder's Farrand Residential Academic Program, argues for "reading of serialized sensation novels as a participatory process, where meaning and emotion are expanded through iterative and contextual interpretations" (Anderman 28). Sensation fiction of the 1860s relied on detailed description and gossip, but, according to Anderman, they may have even been too visual (27). After studying both versions of section 4, released on 25 January 1868, I suspect that The Moonstone, doubling as a detective story, also dependent on a reader's ability to visualize, asks its readers to be aware of their visual surroundings, and question the value of everything they see as if it were a clue. 

A "participatory" reading the two original publications of The Moonstone reveals that its images and surrounding sources do not always agree about the value of their relationship. In this exhibit, items selected from Harper's Weekly prove that while Anderman is correct about the intertextual interactions in serialized sensation fiction, she does not touch on the self-reflexive quality of images and imagery in The Moonstone that contradict the assumption that the illustrated edition tells the story more effectively.

            Although there are many diverse genres which use illustrations within texts, the term “picture books” often conjures an image of children’s books. The importance of reading to children, including picture books, is a widely researched and well supported field. Through this process, children not only develop important language skills, but they also learn the power of imagination and creativity. As philosopher and author G.K. Chesterton puts it, “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.”. These stories tell children that we can overcome our greatest challenges and that anything is possible. As adults, the hope is that we have ingrained this ability, but unfortunately, more than not, we forget that important idea amidst our busy daily lives. Dr. Louise Joy, a professor at Homerton College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, argues that these stories we read as children still have the same effect on us as adults. “We cherish children’s classics precisely because they represent a world that does not resemble the world as we experience it”. With a growing trend of dissatisfaction in adults, the idea of returning to a simple childhood full of possibility is alluring.

            The United States in the mid-19^th century was another time where such desires for a simpler world were relevant. In the wake of the American Civil War, many people were struggling to identify what it meant to be an American, what their country stood for, and what it would come to stand for. The idea that anything is possible could extend to this idea of national identity as this newly unified country sought to define itself. In the American publication of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, the editors, Harper and Brothers, chose to commission illustrations to include as part of the story. Much like the children’s books of our youth, such richly illustrated publications would serve to spark the imagination of a country.

In the reading of this story, readers would be filled with a suspension of disbelief and lean into the supernatural elements of this book. In a mystery story such as The Moonstone, hallmarked as the defining detective novel, this inclusion of illustrations that depict the supernatural heightens the suspense of the reader, as they believe truly, that anything is possible.

Works Cited

“Children’s literature an escape from the adult world” University of Cambridge, 24 sep 2011 https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/childrens-literature-an-escape-from-the-adult-world

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone, edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1999

        It is intriguing to see the significance of relationships that takes place between the transatlantic serializations of The Moonstone, and how the illustrations work with the novel and the pieces that were surrounding the text impact the story. The England publication All The Year Round is heavily text-based were the American publication Harper’s Weekly is a large journal that incorporates many detailed images alongside its text and has three pages in the back dedicated towards advertisements. The serialization of The Moonstone for June 20^th, 1868 is chapter seven. In this chapter, Mr. Franklin Blake is narrating about the encounter with Rachel. Also, Rachel reveals that she witnessed Mr. Franklin stealing her diamond. Moreover, it is essential to understand some of the social contexts that were taking place during 1868, which parallels the printing of The Moonstone in Harper’s Weekly, as it was the end of the civil war in America. Thus, America was in a state of uniting individuals’ perspectives and literally trying to obtain a united state with a collective ideology.

        In the article “The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated Serial in Harper's Weekly” by Mary Leighton and Lisa Surridge they talk about how images have contributed to Harper’s Weekly and impacted the way you read The Moonstone. Leighton and Surridge are introducing that “the Harpers 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” (207). Moreover, The article briefly talks about how Collins sought after a relationship with America by releasing The Moonstone across the Atlantic, which could benefit himself commercially (208). However, I want to expand on the idea of forming relationships. I argue that the illustrations provide insightful information about the significance of relationships whether that is through kinship or economical associations as a way to benefit each other and provide stability. The first two images focus on the relationship aspect and my second two images focus on the sanctuary that interrelations provide.

The 1860s British sensation novel became a best-selling literary genre at both sides of the Atlantic. One of the reasons was its treatment of the social issues that dominated imperialistic Britain and United States. Wilkie Collins’s novel The Moonstone, which was published simultaneously in Britain and the United States through All the Year Round and Harper’s Weekly, is a clear example of this. The propriety of the English high-class Verinder house is disrupted by a diamond robbery occurred inside the house, which places its main characters at stake. Nonetheless, the household is re-established with the irruption of Ezra Jennings. His construction as a character is fully made clear at the twenty-seventh part of the novel, when Collins portrays him as an ambiguous, mixed-race outcast. Being described as “the bastard child of the British Empire” (Thomas, qtd. in Mondal, 24), his character can comment about the novel’s theme of colonial objects in England. Nevertheless, critics have studied this issue mainly considering the Indian background of the diamond and the Brahmin priests. Critic Sharleen Mondal offers an innovative analysis by putting Ezra Jennings as a key element in the novel’s reorientation, in terms of sexuality and desire. Moreover, Ezra Jennings also questions nineteenth-century politics of race, which resonate with the political debates occurring in mid-Victorian England.

Works cited

Mondal, Sharleen. “Racing Desire and the New Man of the House in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone”. Nineteenth Century Gender Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (2009), pp. 23-43. Web. Accessed 25 October 2019. ncgsjournal.com/issue51/mondal.htm

The Moonstone by Willkie Collins is a mystery novel published in 1868. This novel was serialized in both the United Kingdom in All Year Round and the United States of America in Harper’s Weekly. The serialization of this novel consists of 32 parts spanning from January to August, each containing one or two chapters. The Moonstone text itself is the same in both serializations of the text, however, the surrounding images and stories are very different. Harper’s weekly consists of many advertisements and images surrounding the pages of the narrative, whereas All Year Round has few pictures and mostly consists of other narrative stories. The inclusions of the images in Harper’s Weekly significantly changes the way in which The Moonstone can be read.

In the article, “Representations of the Abnormal Body in The Moonstone,” Mark Mossman discusses the way in which disability of the body is presented in The Moonstone, arguing that “the representations of abnormalcy in The Moonstone become the location of a disabled perspective on the workings of Victorian cultural practice”(483). The Moonstone highlights the way Victorian culture thinks about disability by presenting characters that have typical characteristics Victorians would have defined as abnormal. Mossman further points out that Willkie Collins defines the abnormal body as female, impoverished and impaired and highlights the abnormal body by comparing it to “normal” bodies which are male, privileged and able (483). This binary causes the “establishment and far reaching practice of normalizing cultural and institutional structures” (484). This exhibition will demonstrate how this idea of the disabled body and the normalized culture is reinforced in the serialization of The Moonstone. The United States version of The Moonstone alienates the reader because it highlights the aspects of the Other presented in the novel by promoting advertisements that are “solutions” to the Otherness, whereas the United Kingdom's serialization highlights themes of the novel through stories but does not attempt to “cure” it.

Mossman, Mark. “Representations of the Abnormal Body in ‘The Moonstone’” Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 37, No. 2. 2009. pp. 483-500. www.jstor.org/stable/40347242. Accessed 29 November 2019.

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

    The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins made its initial debut in a serialized fashion, appearing in the notorious All The Year Round publication headed by Charles Dickins, whilst appearing simultaneously in the American Harper’s Weekly. The dichotomy that was presented through the publication of the novel by two different establishments posed a unique challenge, with the reading of The Moonstone being suspectable to the external influences brought about by other content surrounding the different chapters in Harper’s Weekly and All The Year Round. In particular, the reading of Part II of The Moonstone, mainly concerning Chapter VI and VII, had the ability to be significantly influenced by not only the format of the magazines, but the content produced within them.

     The different cultural phenomena that occurred across the Atlantic fostered perspectives that would not neccesarily be present in Wilkie Collins original serialization of the novel, and as noted by Mary Leighton, “profoundly affects the narrative’s unfolding and meaning” (Leighton 210). When putting these influences within the context of Chapter’s VI and VII, the narrator Miss Clack experiences manipulation to her own character and narrative through the external content present in both All The Year Round and Harper’s Weekly. This manifests through Miss Clack’s religious background, as the publications construe religion in vastly different ways, painting her narrative in a light reflective of the publication in contrast to the text as an autonomous piece.

 Works Cited

   Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone, edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1999

   Leighton, Mary, 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.

    Gannon, Christiane. “Hinduism, Spiritual Community, and Narrative Form in ‘The Moonstone.’” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 46, 2015, pp. 297–320.

Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 1868.

All The Year Round, Charles Dickens, 1868. 

Wilkie Collins’ sensational novel The Moonstone was simultaneously serialized in All the Year Round in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America through Harper’s Weekly. The two publications presented the text in different ways as they followed their own formatting. Charles Dickens’ periodical All the Year Round followed a simplistic layout which directed attention to the text, whereas Harper’s Weekly placed the literature in the midst of a myriad of current events, advertisements, and other media.

Elizabeth Anderman discusses the way in which the original publishing of The Moonstone in Harper’s Weekly sensationalized the novel in part due to what she calls the participatory process that came with its serialized form (28). She expands on this by talking about how the periodical allowed for meaningful readings of serial instalments due to the influx of media surrounding them. Anderman highlights the importance of illustrations in readings of texts and also how they can provide more insight as they “connect to political articles, biographical profiles, and the images accompanying other fiction serials” (27). She claims that the illustrations, as well as the surrounding media prompt lateral readings of a text, which allow for an enriched understanding of it because “Depending on how the reader looks at the journal, different narrative meanings will be revealed” (Anderman 52).

Though I agree with Anderman’s points about how the layout of Harper’s Weekly allowed readers to gain a meaningful understanding of texts, I think that she fails to discuss other possible effects of it. She also underplays how a differently constructed publication like All the Year Round can prompt meaningful readings in its own way. My exhibit will demonstrate the ways in which Victorian readers of Harper’s Weekly in America may have been distracted by the surrounding images and texts around The Moonstone, as they led them to ponder upon other things or directed their reading of the text. I will also discuss how the simplistic layout of All the Year Round allowed readers of the United Kingdom to achieve a meaningful reading of The Moonstone.

Works Cited

All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal 15 Feb. 1868. 217-240. Print. 

Anderman, Elizabeth. “Serialization, Illustration, and the Art of Sensation.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 52, no. 1, 2019, pp. 27-56. ProjectMUSE, doi:10.1353/vpr.2019.0001. Accessed 3 December 2019.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Edited by John Sutherland. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization 15 Feb. 1868. 97-112. Print.

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.

Wilkie Collins sensational novel, The Moonstone was serialized concurrently in both the American periodical of Harper’s Weekly, as well as in the British periodical of All The Year Round. Though Collins’ serialized installments were printed in the same format on either side of the Atlantic, the content surrounding each publication within the context of the differing periodicals can operate to alter how one can interpret the serialized segments of this novel. The American publication, Harper’s Weekly seems to be driven with intent of entertainment; it is bursting with illustrations, “Humors of the Day” (347), and advertisements. Conversely, the British publication of All The Year Round seems more focused on academic stoicism; it lacks the vibrant and opulent images, adverts and humors that are found in Harper’s, which functions to make this publication appear more phlegmatic in its presentation.

            Mary Leighton and Lisa Surridge discuss the way that the "illustrations [in Harper's] formed an intrinsic part of the American Moonstone, heightening the text’s sensationalism, complicating its already intricate narrative structure, and shifting its treatment of […] disability” (208). This highlights the way that these disparate printing practices can delineate reader perception of disability and difference as performed in this novel. Leighton and Surridge argue that the illustrative printing practices seen in Harper’s actually operates to “de-emphasize disability, [and] heighten the novel’s sympathetic treatment of […] differences” (234). However, by looking at the content that surrounds the May 30, 1868 publication of The Moonstone, a serialized episode that deeply interrogates difference and disability, it can be seen that the Harper’s Weekly publication is actually involved in displaying and delineating difference, as opposed to de-emphasizing it. In the same week's publication of All The Year Round, a pressing call for ignorance of disability and differance is displayed, and thus the British All The Year Round, seems to be more involved in de-emphasizing physical difference than Harper's Weekly.

            Therefore, this exhibit employs itself in displaying how the American publication of Harper’s Weekly actively displays difference; exploiting, sensationalizing, and calling to actively cure it. Where as on the other side of the Atlantic, the British publication of All The Year Round, treats difference by de-emphasizing and ignoring it.

Works Cited: 

Collins, Wilkie. “Third Narrative” The Moonstone. Ed. John Sutherland. New York: OUP, 2008. 292-307. Print.

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.

Wilkie Collin’s novel The Moonstone (1868) was published serially in both the United Kingdom in All the Year Round and in the United States of America in Harper’s Weekly. While the story remained the same in both publications the material published alongside it varied greatly. All the Year Round, Charles Dicken’s literary journal, featured various poems and short stories. While Harper’s Weekly featured lively advertisements, images, and various other columns The inclusion of these materials changes the interpretation of the text, manipulating readers to focus on different themes and social conditions. While both editions were widely successful, the material conditions surrounding the texts would result in it appealing to vastly different audiences. This worked as the United Kingdom and the United States were both in different social and political environments at the time, therefore it appealed to both audiences and found success.

In Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge’s “The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated Serial in Harper’s Weekly” they argue that the images depicting plot point of The Moonstone contribute to the manipulation of audiences surrounding themes of domination, class, ideology, etc. and therefore “added an intricate visual layer to this already complex narrative structure” (210). Throughout the early 1860s the United States of America was dealing with a Civil War and Harper’s Weekly featured news regarding the political state of the country. The idea of ideology and domination is present within The Moonstone but surrounding ads discussing the president, congress, and the ongoing political battle in the United States of America bring that theme to the forefront of the novel. The lack of advertisements and political imaging within All the Year Round allows the audience to focus more on the story itself as it is the first text with short stories and poems coming after.

Leighton and Surridge argue that the illustration can create an “ideological distance between the reader and the imperial narrative” (213) and by looking at images present in part X of The Moonstone the narrative of domination is clearly present in the Harper’s Weekly edition and argues that the various intersection of domination through class and gender. Whereas All the Year Round focuses more on British ideology and eurocentrism, Harper’s Weekly offers a political critique of domination and ideology.

Works Cited

All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal 7 March 1868. Print

Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization 7 March 1868. Print

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.

Harper’s Weekly is very different than All the Year Round. All the Year Round is very limited in the amount of complimentary resources it contains and additional advertisements and entertainments it provides its readers with. It does contain additional entertainment in the form of short stories written by British authors. The advertisements and entertainment in Harper’s Weekly are primarily from American authors written for an American audience speaking about American products. The use of these advertisements with contributes to the promotion of the civilization of America separate from the colonialism of England. Harper’s Weekly’s banner even says that it is a “journal of civilization.” America, through its specially curated entertainment and advertisements is creating an identity for itself outside of the one that was established for it through colonialism. In The Moonstone Rachel Verinder can be said to be attempting to do something similar in her refusal to help with the recovery of the gem. By doing this Rachel is establishing her own independence on her own terms disregarding how difficult it may make things for others. Harper’s Weekly is also different from All the Year Round because through its advertisements and entertainment it is also establishing an identity for that industry within America as well. By having a subliminal message of American independence and identity for its readers while they are consuming a British novel Harper’s Weekly is also contributing to the collective identity Americans were forming at this time as well. Proof of the strong identity and presence Americans have in the media is still present today, especially with the popularity of American programming on a global scale. The fact that Harper’s Weekly contributed to this massive global identity should be recognized and it should be respected for contributing to the roots of the empire of American media is in the present day.

This exhibit contains documents contained in the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Calgary, regarding Robert Kroetsch's poems: Sounding the Name, and The Poets Mother. 

The following materials are drafts from Robert Kroetsch's poems, including two photographs that helped to inspire his writing. 

The textual images give insight into what the full extent of what Kroetsch's archive looks like, as well as Kroetsch's writing process. The textual pages also include many handwritten notes and annotations in the writers own handwriting. 

The exhibit contains materials from the Archives and Special Collection in the University of Calgary. The materials include Robert Kroetsch's drafts and work on his poem, "Excerpts From The Real World".

In the exhibit, you will be able to see changes throughout the draft, which pinpoints towards Kroetsch's thought process.

There are also pieces of papers, typed and written, letters, and small notes with writing on them. 

These items were chosen to demonstrate the variant forms of a single element of poetry that can be found within the Kroetsch archive. By demonstrating the progress of a single passage, from an initial idea handwritten on an envelope, through hand written pages, and those typed both on lined and unlined paper, we hope to give insight into the creative process of Kroetsch's writing.

This digital exhibit presents materials housed in the Robert Kroetsch archives at the University of Calgary’s Archives and Special Collections. The materials surround letters he wrote to his lover while she was in Greece. These specific pages were written reflecting on her absence on the poet’s birthday, June 26, 1981. The exhibit consists of two typescript versions of Kroetsch's epistolary poem "Letters to Salonika", the first four pages consist of the letter, while the final presents the published poetic materials regarding the same event.

 In this excerpt, Duddy begins his search for his missing brother, Lennie. In his search Duddy goes to the Calder house in Westmont and to a bar on the McGill Campus but has no success. Throughout the chapter worries of suicide plague Duddy’s thoughts. There are three key changes from the manuscript to the published version of the text. On page 171 of the manuscript, Duddy gets into an altercation with Steve in the bar. However, Duddy’s outburst of violence is omitted from the published text. Richler softens Duddy’s character by removing a scene depicting Duddy’s volcanic temperament. The second differentiation between the manuscript and the published text is the removal of Duddy’s concerns that Leonard committed suicide. Richler omits four instances where death or suicide is explicitly mentioned on pages 170, 171 (twice), and 173. By purposefully omitting references to death in the published version, Richler alludes to Duddy’s worry of Leonard’s suicide in a more nuanced and poignant way. Lastly, Richler leaves evidence of his creative process through holographic markings on the top of page 175 and the back of page 174. Richler’s hand-written notes later become the opening paragraph of chapter 9. 

The excerpt chosen from the manuscript covers Lennie recounting the story behind Sandra's abortion and Duddy's letter reporting Irwin as a communist. On page 187, Lennie directly accuses Duddy of being callous, which is removed from the published edition, making Duddy's redemption as a character more plausible for the reader. It allows for ambiguity of Duddy's character and his potential to be the "gentleman." On page 188, Lennie states that Sandra hemorrhaged during the abortion, which is also removed in the published edition. This removes any adverse consequences of the abortion, making the scene seem less dangerous. It also alleviates Lennie's fault in the matter. On pages 189-191, the manuscript and the published edition contain a modified sequence of events. In the manuscript, Lennie's confession on performing the abortion and Duddy’s convincing Lennie to return home happen consecutively, whereas the published edition separates the two with a night's sleep and Duddy’s return from making work connections. Duddy also justifies being there for "business" in the published version, giving the impression that his actions must always benefit himself in some way.  This change makes Duddy seem less caring and more rational and self-serving, especially since Duddy justifies his presence by his own agenda. "Bitch" is changed to "fershtunke tuchos-head" meaning, "crap-head", and using "Daddy" instead of “Paw” changes the tone of the scene, further solidifying Duddy’s immaturity. The Yiddish malediction is likely to portray Duddy within some Jewish grounding. This contrasts with the change in page 191B of Duddy’s letter reporting Irwin, where the language becomes more elevated - Duddy replaces, “talking” with "propagandizing". The text has significant changes that reflect mostly on Duddy's character by deeming him immature in some parts but also selfish and business-orientated.

            The typescript included in this exhibit pertains to the opening section of Part 3, Chapter 1 of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler. In this section of the novel, Duddy is enjoying the autonomy obtained from his professional successes: he is living independently with Yvette and Virgil, and broadening his horizons by expanding his social circle. Pages 223-227 of the typescript highlight the subtle changes in characterization that Richler made to the finalized version of the text. Details on Virgil’s characterization are removed from the published text, the most notable of which are the omissions of Virgil’s poem (p 223) and his statement that Duddy "could…write better poetry” than him (p 227a). The effect of these omissions is that Virgil’s poetic capabilities are obscured in the published text, while the typescript suggests Virgil’s abilities to be rather humble. Duddy also makes a rendezvous with his classmate Hersh, who used to be “Rabinovitch” in the typescript. Rabinovitch, a “lanky young man with a long wobbly head,” (p 224) is a painter, while Hersh, a “big chunky man with a long severe head,” is a writer. Rabinovitch is also portrayed to be rather sensitive, apologizing to Duddy for his hostility during their initial meeting in this section (p 226). Through Hersh, with his severe appearance and his occupation as a writer, Richler comments on the commercialization of the writing industry in the published text. In the typescript, Duddy is discussing poetry in the company of bohemians, and states that he enjoys the work of E. E. Cummings, “the guy who doesn’t use capitals” (p 225). Duddy mentions his poem “i sing of olaf”, and instead recites an American patriotic song in an offhand, erroneous manner (p 225). With the omission of this scene, Richler obscures Duddy’s rather superficial and pseudo-intellectual air. In the typescript, Duddy’s vulnerability is revealed when he “blushed” at Yvette’s scrutiny of his purchase of Blum’s book of poetry (p 226). When observing Duddy making plans for developing the lake, Yvette sympathizes with him, thinking “poor Duddy” (p 226). These instances are removed from the published text, with the effect that the relationship between Duddy and Yvette is less balanced; Duddy’s dominance in their relationship is emphasized. Duddy’s attempt to justify the scrap deal with Cohen to Mr. Calder, which is hand-written on the final page of this typescript (p 227b), was finalized in the published novel. In this scene, Duddy attempts to impress upon Mr. Calder the personal inconvenience that he is enduring in order to save the latter’s reputation in the Jewish community, when in fact, Duddy is benefiting from a commission. The addition of this scene serves to highlight Duddy’s manipulative nature.