Serials to Graphic Novels
Page 1
Serials to Graphic Novels
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
Serials to Graphic Novels
The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book
Catherine J. Golden
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA
Gainesville Tallahassee Tampa Boca Raton
Pensacola Orlando Miami Jacksonville Ft. Myers Sarasota
Copyright 2017 by Catherine J. Golden
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
This book may be available in an electronic edition.
First cloth printing, 2017
First paperback printing, 2018
23 22 21 20 19 18 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Golden, Catherine, author.
Title: Serials to graphic novels : the evolution of the Victorian illustrated book / Catherine J. Golden.
Description: Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035951 | ISBN 9780813062297 (cloth)
ISBN 9780813064987 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Illustration of books, Victorian—Great Britain—History. | Serial publications—History. | Caricatures and cartoons—History. | Graphic novels—History. | Illustration of books—History.
Classification: LCC NC978 .G64 2017 | DDC 741.6/4094109034—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035951
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://upress.ufl.edu
For my sons,
Emmet and Jesse,
and foremost my husband, Michael
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Arc of the Victorian Illustrated Book
1. The Pickwick Papers and the Rise of the Serial
2. Caricature: A Theatrical Development
3. Realism, Victorian Material Culture, and the Enduring Caricature Tradition
4. Caricature and Realism: Fin-de-Siècle Developments of the Victorian Illustrated Book
Conclusion: The Victorian Graphic Classics—Heir of the Victorian Illustrated Book
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
1. Thomas Rowlandson, “Doctor Syntax & The Bees”
2. George and Robert Cruikshank, “Midnight. Tom & Jerry at a Coffee Shop near the Olympic”
3. Robert Seymour, “Mr. Pickwick in Chase of His Hat”
4. Hablot Knight Browne, “The Dying Clown”
5. Hablot Knight Browne, “Mr. Pickwick in the Pound”
6. Hablot Knight Browne, “Mr. Pickwick Slides”
7. George Cruikshank, “Jack Sheppard in Company with Edgeworth Bess Escaping from Clerkenwell Prison”
8. George Cruikshank, “Oliver Asking for More”
9. John Leech, “Ignorance and Want”
10. Hablot Knight Browne, “The Shadow in the Little Parlour”
11. Hablot Knight Browne, “Let Him Remember It in That Room, Years to Come”
12. Richard Doyle, “The Marquis ‘en Montagnard’”
13. Hablot Knight Browne, “Traddles and I, in Conference with the Misses Spenlow”
14. William Makepeace Thackeray, “Becky’s Second Appearance in the ‘Character of Clytemnestra’”
15. George Cruikshank, “The Last Chance”
16. George Cruikshank, “Fagin in the Condemned Cell”
17. William Makepeace Thackeray, pictorial capital to chapter 4, Vanity Fair
18. Lewis Carroll, “Alice Outgrowing the White Rabbit’s House”
19. Lewis Carroll, “She Felt a Violent Blow on Her Chin”
20. John Leech, “Mr. Jorrocks (loq)—‘Come hup! I say—You ugly Beast’”
21. Robert Cruikshank, “Hot Work in China”
22. George Cruikshank, “The Meeting”
23. George Cruikshank, “Oliver Amazed at the Dodger’s Mode of ‘Going to Work,’” and Hablot Knight Browne, “The Discovery of Jingle in the Fleet”
24. “The late King William IV’s Royal Bible”
25. “Fountain and Park Gates in Cast Iron”
26. Cover for The Ingoldsby Legends, 1855, and cover for The Ingoldsby Legends, 1864
27. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Maids of Elfen-Mere”
28. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “Frontispiece” and “Title-Page Illustration,” Goblin Market and Other Poems
29. John Everett Millais, “The Good Samaritan”
30. John Everett Millais, “Mary’s Letter”
31. George Du Maurier, “Oh, Molly, Molly, Come and Judge Between Us”
32. Marcus Stone, “Forming the Domestic Virtues”
33. Hablot Knight Browne, “Somebody Turns Up,” and Fred Barnard, “Mr. Micawber, Impressing the Names of Streets and the Shapes of Corner Houses Upon Me as We Went Along”
34. Hablot Knight Browne, “A Stranger Calls to See Me,” and Fred Barnard, “If a Ship’s Cook That Was Turning Settler, Mas’r Davy, Didn’t Make Offer Fur to Marry Mrs. Gummidge, I’m Gormed—And I Can’t Say No Fairer Than That!”
35. George Cruikshank, “Oliver Asking for More,” and James Mahoney, headpiece to ch. 1, Oliver Twist
36. George Cruikshank, “Fagin in the Condemned Cell,” and James Mahoney, “He Sat Down on a Stone Bench Opposite the Door”
37. James Mahoney, “He Moved, Backwards, Towards the Door: Dragging the Dog with Him”
38. Lewis Carroll, “Caterpillar on a Mushroom,” and John Tenniel, “Caterpillar on a Mushroom”
39. Lewis Carroll, “Alice Outgrowing the White Rabbit’s House,” and John Tenniel, “Alice Outgrowing the White Rabbit’s House”
40. Lewis Carroll, “Alice and the White Rabbit,” and John Tenniel, “The White Rabbit, Esquire”
41. George Du Maurier, “‘Maman M’a Donné Quat’ Sous Pour M’en Aller à la Foire’”
42. Beatrix Potter, “Squirrel Nutkin Gathering Pincushions from a Briar Bush”
43. Beatrix Potter, “Peter Rabbit Eating Radishes”
44. George Du Maurier, “Martia, I Have Done My Best”
45. George Du Maurier, “‘Et Maintenant Dors, Ma Mignonne!’” and George Cruikshank, “The Jew and Morris Bolter Begin to Understand Each Other”
46. George Du Maurier, “An Incubus”
47. Hugo Petrus, “Mr. Collins Dancing Poorly with Elizabeth”
48. Rajesh Nagulakonda, “Lady Catherine and Elizabeth Bennet in a Verbal Duel”
49. John M. Burns, “Jane Eyre’s Prophetic Dream”
50. John M. Burns, “Catherine Earnshaw’s Bible”
51. Mike Collins, “Marley’s Ghost”
52. Lee Bermejo, “Nobody Loved Him”
53. Simon Grennan, final panel from Dispossession
54. Will Eisner, “Fagin at the School”
55. Will Eisner, “Fagin in the Condemned Cell with Oliver”
56. Rajesh Nagulakonda, “Oliver Asking for More”
57. Olivier Deloye, “Nancy’s Murder”
58. Érica Awano, “Alice Outgrowing the White Rabbit’s House”
59. Rajesh Nagulakonda, “Curiouser and Curiouser!”
60. Érica Awano, “She Felt a Violent Blow on Her Chin,” and Lewis Carroll, “She Felt a Violent Blow on Her Chin”
Abbreviations for Books Commonly Referred to for Parenthetical Citations
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from The Annotated Alice: AA
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground: UG
A Christmas Carol: CC
Charles Dickens and His Publishers: CDP
David Copperfield: DC
Dispossession: D
Dombey and Son: DS
Fagin the Jew: FTJ
Jack Sheppard: JS
John Caldigate: JC
The Journal of Beatrix Potter from 1881–1897: JBP
The Martian: M
Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851: ODIC
Oliver Twist: OT
Our Mutual Friend: OMF
Peter Ibbetson: PI
Pickwick and The Pickwick Papers: P
Trilby: T
Vanity Fair: VF
Wuthering Heights: WH
Preface and Acknowledgments
On the bookshelves of my home and office sit nineteenth- and early twentieth-century illustrated editions of the complete works of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. Alongside them are illustrated versions of books by Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Du Maurier and treasured books of my childhood—the complete Peter Rabbit series, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Winnie-the-Pooh. Some volumes came from the library of my mother, who read them aloud to me when I was a child, and others are gifts from my husband, sons, and friends.
Illustrated books sparked my desire to become a Victorianist. During my senior year at Brown University, I enrolled in a course entitled “The History of the Printed Book,” which met at the John Carter Brown Library. Each week, my professor, Roger Sherman, showed us the riches of Brown University’s Special Collections. I became hooked by the look, smell, and feel of rare books and periodicals with their elaborate bindings, marbleized papers, gilded edges, pictorial capital letters, and full-page engravings. For my senior project at Brown, I created an exhibition on Oliver Twist at the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library entitled “The Impact of George Cruikshank on the Social Novel of Charles Dickens.” I still list this library display on my CV, and, after all these years, I have kept the captions and introduction I wrote for the exhibition.
In graduate school at the University of Michigan, I studied a wide range of literary works. When it came time to choose a dissertation topic, I gravitated to the Victorian illustrated book. I designed a course entitled “The Victorian Illustrated Book: A Marriage of Image and Word” at Skidmore College to offer my students the kind of archival experience that convinced me to become an English professor. I have partnered with Special Collections to design library exhibitions based on the Norman M. Fox Collection, an extensive holding of nineteenth-century illustrated books in the College’s Pohndorff Room. Part of the pleasure in taking students to the rare book room lies in its mystique; even graduating English majors are often surprised to learn of the Pohndorff Room’s existence and awed by its treasures. Some students who took this course or my Victorian literature classes have followed in my footsteps to become English professors or high school English teachers.
Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, I often ask myself, “What is the use of a book without pictures”? This book aims to answer that very question. It is my hope that Serials to Graphic Novels will encourage readers to put aside their Nooks and Kindles, collect rare books and periodicals with their original illustrations, read illustrations as the Victorians once did, and grow “curiouser and curiouser” about graphic novel adaptations of Victorian classics.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the many research institutions far and near that opened their collections of hard-to-find and out-of-print materials to facilitate my research. This project led me to London to the British Library Reading Room and the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I conducted much of my research at the Lucy Scribner Library at my home institution. I am indebted to the Fox family who first loaned and then donated the Norman M. Fox Collection to the library’s Special Collections. Some of the books in the Fox Collection are like old friends; I know just where Bentley’s Miscellany (with the complete installments of “Oliver Twist”) and a first edition of The Pickwick Papers sit on the shelves.
Wendy Anthony, Special Collections Curator, and Jane Kjaer, Public Access Assistant, have made the Fox Collection readily available to me as I researched and wrote this book. They gave me a designated library cart to facilitate my research and arranged for me to use materials from the Pohndorff Room and the Hoge Building when the library was closed for renovations.
I am particularly grateful to Wendy for teaching me how to handle rare books with love and care. I also appreciate the assistance of other Scribner Library staff members, foremost John Cosgrove, humanities librarian; Sandy Brown, interlibrary loan coordinator; Doris Pettit, Circulation Department; and Andy Krzystyniak, interlibrary loan/science librarian. John graciously helped me to locate and access hard-to-find period reviews of nineteenth-century novels. John and Wendy were also invaluable resources for questions large and small as I wrote and copyedited this book.
I am grateful to Skidmore College for granting me a sabbatical leave for the 2014–15 academic year and awarding me a sabbatical enhancement, stipend, and faculty development grants to cover the reproduction rights for the pictures included in this book. I appreciate the expert assistance of David Seiler, Visual Resources and Digitization Director of the Scribner Library, who scanned and photographed books from the Fox Collection. I am greatly indebted to Hunt Conard, Director of Media Services, who kindly assisted me in scanning book illustrations from my personal library in January 2015 and January 2016. I extend my thanks to Jerome McGann of the University of Virginia and the University of Virginia Library for granting me permission to reproduce material for this book.
I have deep appreciation for my longtime publisher, University Press of Florida. This is the third book I have published with UPF. Amy Gorelick, former Acquisitions Editor, showed great enthusiasm for this book and my two previous books, Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing (UPF 2009) and Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction (UPF 2003), and she oversaw my advance contract. I am grateful to Dennis Lloyd, former Deputy Director for Sales, Marketing, and Acquisitions, for transitioning me smoothly to my new Acquisitions Editor, Shannon McCarthy. I am thankful for Shannon’s guidance as I wrote and revised the manuscript, secured permissions for illustrations, responded to readers’ reports, and finalized details for publication. I am grateful to Peter Betjemann, Paul Goldman, and a third anonymous reviewer who read my manuscript and offered helpful suggestions to strengthen this book. I benefited, too, from the talent and guidance of Eleanor Deumens, Assistant Editor and project manager; Beth Detwiler, copy editor; Robyn Taylor, designer; Ali Sundook, Acquisitions Assistant; and Valerie Melina, Editorial Assistant.
I greatly appreciate the insights and support of my Skidmore colleagues. Two distinguish themselves. Linda Simon, professor emeritus of English, is an insightful literary critic who has written biographies on William
James, Alice B. Toklas, and Coco Chanel and books on topics ranging from the history of electricity to the circus. Linda encouraged me to pursue this project, read the prospectus for my book, offered very helpful suggestions, and cheered me on as I revised Serials to Graphic Novels. Tillman Nechtman, a specialist in British Imperial history at Skidmore, was an invaluable sounding board for my project. During our many conversations, some over lemonade and cookies in Tillman’s backyard, we discussed methodological approaches, terminology, and possible titles. I, in turn, learned about his current book project on Britain’s Empire at Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific entitled The Pretender of Pitcairn Island.
I am grateful for the many excellent students in my courses at Skidmore College on “The Victorian Illustrated Book,” “The Nineteenth-Century British Novel,” “Jane Austen,” “Children’s Literature,” and “Victorian Literature and Culture.” Some stand out. Melissa Rampelli ’06 is among the strongest thesis students in my career at Skidmore College; she earned an award for her dissertation on nineteenth-century British and American literature that she completed under my guidance. Teaching high school English after her graduation, Melissa returned to academia and earned a PhD in 2016 in English Literature at St. John’s University with a dissertation on hysteria in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century British literature. Melissa has taught summer school at Skidmore for the past several summers, and I have relished our discussions about her research and my own. I am grateful to Melissa for her insights into nineteenth-century literature and culture.
Douglas Pilawa ’12 fell in love with rare books when he took my course on “The Victorian Illustrated Book.” An excellent reader of images and texts and a strong researcher and writer, Douglas, who began law school at Case Western Reserve University in 2016, has attended the Fox-Adler Lecture series even after his graduation. Through the years, I have benefited from Douglas’s insights into the Victorian illustrated book and Jane Austen. Like Douglas, Mae Capozzi ’15 is wise beyond her years. In my course on “The Nineteenth-Century British Novel” and in conversations in my office, Mae asked me smart and insightful questions that shaped my thinking and informed, in particular, chapter 4 and the conclusion. Finally, Aimee Hall ’19, the top student in my first-year seminar on the history of children’s literature, served as my research assistant for the final stages of this book. I am grateful to Aimee for her invaluable assistance in proofing and indexing. Her enthusiasm for Victorian literature and skill in copyediting brought enjoyment to these important tasks as I brought Serials to Graphic Novels to completion.