Opening pages and spine of Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone. A Novel." — entered into the Library of Congress by Harper & Bros. in 1867 in anticipation of the 1868 serialisation.

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Opening pages & spine of Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone. A Novel."

Harper & Bros. house illustrators "C. E." and William Jewett

Wood engraving

each page 23.3 x 14.3 cm

Opening pages and spine of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. A Novel (July 1868) — entered into the Library of Congress by Harper & Bros. in 1867 in anticipation of the 1868 serialisation. Pages 8-9. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image 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 photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

The serial illustrations appearing here are courtesy of the E. J. Pratt Fine Arts Library, University of Toronto, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia.

Commentary: The 1868 [July] Harper and Brothers' Volume "With many illustrations"

Passage Introducing "By Wilkie Collins"

Of all the living authors of English fiction no one better understands the art of story-telling than Wilkie Collins. He has the faculty of coloring the mystery of the plot, exciting terror, pity, curiosity, and other passions, such as belongs to few if any of his confreres, however much they may excel him in other respects. His style, too, is singularly appropriate — less forced and artificial than the average modern novelist. — Boston Transcript. [8]

The opening pages of the July 1868 first edition of Wilkie Collins's A Moonstone. A Novel demonstrate how the headnote vignettes from the Harper's Weekly serial text were incorporated into the volume: positioned in the upper-left quadrant of the page (here, for example, the opening vignette of the idol of the Hindu Moon God at Benares), the small-scale wood-engraving (11.3 cm by 5.4 cm) has simply been dropped into the left-hand column of page, as in the 4 January 1868 number of the magazine. In contrast, in the 1874 (second) edition, this same illustration takes up about three-quarters of page 12 in a full-page type-set page, measuring 11.7 cm by 5.6 cm — in other words, the illustration has been slightly redrafted to better fit on the page of the 1874 edition, which is an entirely different typesetting from the 1868 edition, and the title changed from the 1868 serial The Moonstone: A Romance to the 1868 volume (The Moonstone: A Novel) retained. The facing page attests to Collins's already-established popularity in America with such novels as The Woman in White, The Queen of Hearts, No Name, and Armadale. Interestingly, the publisher entered the book title in the District Court of New York late in 1867 in order to prevent copyright infringement when the novel began its serial run on 4 January 1868.

The elegant, gold-lettered spine and tan morocco binding of the Harper and Brothers (New York, 1868) volume render this first edition of The Moonstone. A Novel (no longer "A Romance") a very attractive first edition, which is also the first illustrated complete edition of novel since it has utilised all sixty-six of the original periodical full-page and vignette engravings on wood by William Jewett and a second illustrator, "C. B." Wilkie Collins himself pronounced the early illustrations "very picturesque," although he took issue with depicting Betteredge in eighteenth-century servant's livery. The tall, slender octavo volume has 223 pages formatted, like All the Year Round, in two columns, and includes two pages of publisher's advertisements. The American publisher's original reddish-brown pebble-grained cloth paneled in blind, rebacked with matching morocco, the spine in six compartments having gilt between raised bands, and two green morocco labels gilt. It is in very good condition for a book nearly 150 years old.

The Moonstone appeared originally in All the Year Round (London) and Harper's Weekly (New York), and as The Moonstone: A Romance in three volumes (London: Tinsley, 1868). The first American edition entitled The Moonstone. A Novel was published only a few days after the British edition in July as an octavo volume; however, the British triple-decker was unillustrated. A second edition published by Harper and Brothers in 1874 lacks the refinement and forty-nine of the original illustrations. The 1868 volume, moreover, with finer print and paper, contains just 223 pages, whereas the larger 1874 volume, a much plainer publication with a lower grade of paper, has much larger print, resulting in a length of 491 pages.

That the 1868 serialised novel has been filmed in 1909, 1915, 1934, 1972, and 1997 attests to its enduring appeal, although its popularity may be restricted to courses in crime and detection fiction and the Victorian novel.

Related Materials

The Moonstone and British India (1857, 1868, and 1876)
Detection and Disruption inside and outside the 'quiet English home' in The Moonstone
Illustrations by F. A. Fraser for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1890)
Illustrations by John Sloan for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1908)
Illustrations by Alfred Pearse for The Moonstone: A Romance (1910)
The 1944 illustrations by William Sharp for The Moonstone (1946).

Last updated 1 September 2016