Twenty-Six Headnote Vignettes by William Jewett for Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone" in "Harper's Weekly" (4 January — 8 August 1868) (original) (raw)

Jewett's Twenty-Six Headnote Vignettes for The Moonstonein Harper's Weekly (1868)

The initial vignette for A Tale of Two Cities, 7 May 1859: Providence releases Dr. Manette from solitary confinement in the Bastille.

The small-scale headnote-vignettes that precede each weekly instalment of a serialised novel such as Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (McLenan, 7 May-26 November 1859) or Wilkie Collins's No Name (McLenan, 15 March 1862-17 January 1863) are a distinctive paratextual feature of Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Like its transAtlantic counterparts, the large-scale British weeklies The Illustrated London News (founded in 1842) and laterThe Graphic (founded in 1869), Harper's Weekly from 1857 covered recent news events, including political affairs and the theatres, and of course throughout the early to mid-1860s the Civil War in text and large-scale illustrations. And, like its British counterparts, it ran contemporary short fiction and novels in serial accompanied by woodblock illustrations. However, the American weekly had a distinctive visual component: the uncaptioned headnote vignette, which led off each week's number of a work in serial.

Typically, a weekly vignette is 11.3 cm high by 5.5 cm wide (5 ⅝ by 2 ¾ inches), and includes the magazine's signature: the date of issue, the statement of copyright protection, the title of the novel, the name of the author, "Printed from the Author's Manuscript. Richly illustrated," and then the chapter number, and proceeded by (if aplicable) the title of the part.

The vignette, despite its lacking a caption to guide the reader to the moment realised, may be read proleptically, that is, it offers clues in its detailing, its background, and in its principal figure, as to the textual passage whose importance it underscores by its commanding position at the head of the number. Accordingly, it both previews and foreshadows a significant moment in the week's instalment. Upon seeing it for the first time, the serial reader must have instantly experienced a sense of anticipation, realizing that this a visualisation of an important moment in the text. It does not necessarily realise a moment at the beginning of the number; sometimes that moment lies well ahead, and therefore encouraged a more intense engagement with the letterpress. Frequently, upon discovering the passage realised, the reader would turn back to re-examine the miniature illustration. Necessarily, because the background must be minimal in so small a wood-engraving, the illustrator tends to focus on a single figure, but provides details such as properties and clothing to direct the reader to the point anticipated.

Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the images and (2) link your document to this URL.]

Bibliography

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone: A Romance. With sixty-six illustrations by William Jewett. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Vol. 12 (1868), 4 January through 8 August 1868, pp. 5-529.

________. The Moonstone: A Romance. All the Year Round. 1 January-8 August 1868.

_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With many illustrations. First edition. New York & London: Harper and Brothers, [July] 1868.

_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With 19 illustrations. Second edition. New York & London: Harper and Brothers, 1874.

_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by George Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. London: Chatto and Windus, 1890.

_________. The Moonstone, Parts One and Two. The Works of Wilkie Collins, vols. 5 and 6. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900.

_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With four illustrations by John Sloan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.

_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by A. S. Pearse. London & Glasgow: Collins, 1910, rpt. 1930.

_________. The Moonstone. Illustrated by William Sharp. New York: Doubleday, 1946.

_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With nine illustrations by Edwin La Dell. London: Folio Society, 1951.

Gregory, E. R. "Murder in Fact." The New Republic. 22 July 1878, pp. 33-34.

Karl, Frederick R. "Introduction." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Scarborough, Ontario: Signet, 1984. Pp. 1-21.

Leighton, Mary Elizabeth, and Lisa Surridge. "The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated Serial in Harper's Weekly." Victorian Periodicals Review Volume 42, Number 3 (Fall 2009): pp. 207-243. Accessed 1 July 2016. http://englishnovel2.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2014/01/42.3.leighton-moonstone-serializatation.pdf

Nayder, Lillian. Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, & Victorian Authorship. London and Ithaca, NY: Cornll U. P., 2001.

Peters, Catherine. The King of the Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins. London: Minerva, 1991.

Reed, John R. "English Imperialism and the Unacknowledged crime of The Moonstone. Clio 2, 3 (June, 1973): 281-290.

Stewart, J. I. M. "A Note on Sources." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 527-8.

Vann, J. Don. "The Moonstone in All the Year Round, 4 January-8 1868." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 48-50.

Winter, William. "Wilkie Collins." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. Pp. 203-219.

Created 26 October 2025