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Five vignettes by William Sharp for the Cover of Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone" (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
Pen-ank-ink drawing.
21.8 x 13.4 cm
Five Illustrations for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, on the tan-grey cover of the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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The book cover employs five vignettes drawn directly from the text's smaller illustrations, as if preparing the reader for scenes that he or she will encounter over the course of reading the Doubleday volume: upper register: 1. Sergeant Cuff, Lady Julia Verinder, and Gabriel Betteredge from page 101; 2. centre left: Betteredge in his easy chair reading Robinson Crusoe attended by his dogs from page 437; 3. centre: Rosanna Spearman from page 110; 4. centre right: Sergeant Cuff and Gabriel Betteredge examining boot-prints in the sand from page 119; 5. bottom register: The Laudanum Experiment: Ezra Jennings, Rachel Verinder, Mathew Bruff, and Gabriel Betteredge from page 395. Gabriel Betteredge, the novel's principal narrator, is the common thread throughout these vignettes, whose meaning the reader will gradually apprehend over the course of reading the novel and encountering each illustration.
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone: A Romance. with sixty-six illustrations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Vol. 12 (1868), 4 January through 8 August, pp. 5-503.
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone: A Romance. All the Year Round. 1 January-8 August 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With many illustrations. First edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, [July] 1868.
_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With 19 illustrations. Second edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1874.
_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by George Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. London: Chatto and Windus, 1890.
_________. The Moonstone. With 19 illustrations. The Works of Wilkie Collins. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900. Volumes 6 and 7.
_________. 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.
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.
Last updated 10 October 2016