Commentary: Another Best-seller follows A Tale of Two Cities

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The novel's serial run in Dickens's weekly journal All the Year Round began on precisely the same date as the New York run, a fact which suggests that Dickens had sent Harper's advance proofs. And unlike Harper's Weekly, in his replacement for Household Words (1850-59) editor-owner Charles Dickens offered the British reading public no illustrations. Moreover, whereas the British serial concluded with weekly instalment no. 40 on 25 August 1860, the Harper's serialisation did not wind up until 8 September 1860. The novel first appeared in volume form on 15 August 1860. The 1861 British edition, somewhat revised, was illustrated by British artist Sir John Gilbert with seven plates, much in the style of McLenan and engraved by the Dalziels. The editors of the Broadview edition, Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox, note that Dickens gambled that Collins's novel would sustain the circulation which A Tale of Two Cities had created for Dickens's new weekly journal: sales soared to 100,000 copies per week.

The illustration for 25 August 1860, "I am thinking," said he, "whether I shall add to the disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fire-place", in which Count Fosco threatens Walter, actually depicts a scene already published in All the Year Round on the 18th of August (Chapters 6 and 7 in "Mrs. Catherick; The Story Continued by Walter Hartright"). Thus, even though this is the final full-scale illustration in Harper's Weekly, the American serial ran for two further weeks (to 8 September 1860), but without illustrations for "The Story Continued by Isidor, Ottavio, Baldassare Fosco" and "The Story Concluded by Walter Hartright." Meanwhile, in the British edition issued under fresh agreements with Collins, after Sampson Low's one-volume edition of 1861, Smith Elder issued the novel in 1865 with eight illustrations by F. A. Fraser (1846-1920), a magazine illustrator and cartoonist now chiefly remembered for his work on the Household Edition of the works of Charles Dickens (1871-78).

Related Material

Bibliography

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. New York: Harper & Bros., 1861 (first printing, 15 August 1860; reissued in single-column format in 1902, 548 pages).

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White: A Novel. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Illustrated by John McLenan. Vols. III-IV (16 November 1859 through 8 September 1860).

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser and Sir John Gilbert. London: Sampson Low, 1861; rpt. Chatto & Windus, 1875.

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Ed. Maria K. Bachman and Don Richard Cox. Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert and F. A. Fraser. Toronto: Broadview, 2006.

Peters, Catherine. "Chapter Twelve: The Woman in White (1859-1860)." The King of the Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins. London: Minerva, 1992. Pp. 205-225.

Vann, J. Don. "The Woman in White in All the Year Round, 26 November 1859 — 25 August 1860." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 44-46.


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7 August 2024