Initial letter "W" (Bathsheba carrying a milk pail) (page 1) vertically-mounted, 5.9 cm wide by 7.6 cm high, signed "H. Paterson" in the lower-right corner. Helen Patterson Allingham, initial thumbnail vignette illustration for Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd Cornhill Magazine (January 1874), Chapters 1 ("Description of Farmer Oak: An Incident.") through 5 ("Departure of Bathsheba: A Pastoral Tragedy.") in Vol. 29: pages 1 through 26 (26.75 pages in instalment). The wood-engraver responsible for this illustration was Joseph Swain (1820-1909), noted for his engravings of Sir John Tenniel's cartoons Punch. [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Right: The title-page for Volume 29 of the Cornhill (1874).
Already Allingham has given us two representations of the headstrong Hardy heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, in as many pages of the serialised novel: she appears in a total of ten full-page plates plates (for instalments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 12) and four vignettes: this, and the initial-letter thumbnails for instalments 2, 11, and 12. In other words, Hardy's heroine appears in all but ten of the novel's twenty-four illustrations).
This initial vignette is based on a passage in Ch. 3: "She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left arm was extended as balance, enough of it being shown bare to make Oak wish that the event had happened in summer, when the whole would have been revealed" (p. 12).
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 them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. Volume One: 1840-1892; Volume Three: 1903-1908, ed. Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978, 1982.
Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd. With illustrations by Helen Paterson Allingham. The Cornhill Magazine. Vols. XXIX and XXX. Ed. Leslie Stephen. London: Smith, Elder, January through December, 1874. Published in volume on 23 November 1874.
Created 12 December 2001 Last updated 22 October 2022