Initial letter "B" (Fanny Robin near the military barracks at Casterbridge) (page 257) vertically-mounted, 7.5 cm high by 6.2 cm wide, signed "H. Paterson" in the lower-right corner. Helen Patterson Allingham, second thumbnail vignette illustration for Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd Cornhill Magazine (March 1874), Chapters 9 ("The Homestead: A Visitor: Half-Confidences.") through 14 ("Effect of the Letter: Sunrise.") in Vol. 29: pages 257 through 279 (23.6 pages in instalment); plates: initial "B" signed "H. P." left of centre at bottom margin and 'Get The Front-Door Key.' Liddy Fetched it.. The wood-engraver was Joseph Swain (1820-1909). [Click on the image to enlarge it; mouse over links.]
Right: The title-page for Volume 29 of the Cornhill (1874).
Now Allingham introduces the romantic complication that will undo the marriage of the sometimes imperious Bathsheba Everdene and the dashing Sergeant Troy, for through a sexual liaison with Fanny Robin, Troy has unwittingly fathered a child. The initial vignette comes from later in the instalment than the main illustration, "Get the front door key" for Chapter Ten. The small-scale plate realizes the scene in Ch. 11 in which Fanny ineptly throws snowballs at Troy's barracks window in Melbury: "The figure was stooping. Then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the fifth window" (p. 268).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image 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 22 October 2022