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Vignette: The Hindu Moon God on His Antelope (uncaptioned)
William Sharp
pen-and-ink wood-engraving.
8.6 by 5.7 cm
Illustration of scene from Chapter 3 of the "Second Period, Third Narrative" in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, p. 269, in the 1946 Doubleday edition. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
I can explain the first sentence to you,” he said; “and the conduct of the Indians themselves will explain the rest. The god of the moon is represented, in the Hindoo mythology, as a four-armed deity, seated on an antelope; and one of his titles is the regent of the night. Here, then, to begin with, is something which looks suspiciously like an indirect reference to the Moonstone. Now, let us see what the Indians did, after the prison authorities had allowed them to receive their letter. On the very day when they were set free they went at once to the railway station, and took their places in the first train that started for London. We all thought it a pity at Frizinghall that their proceedings were not privately watched. But, after Lady Verinder had dismissed the police-officer, and had stopped all further inquiry into the loss of the Diamond, no one else could presume to stir in the matter. The Indians were free to go to London, and to London they went. What was the next news we heard of them, Mr. Bruff?" — "Second Period. The Discovery of the Truth (1848-1849). The Events related in several Narratives. Second Narrative. Contributed by Mathew Bruff, Solictor, of Gray's Inn Square," Chapter 3, p. 269.
The original 4 January 1868 uncaptioned headnote vignette (reproduced in later editions) depicts the first set of Brahmin priests worshipping the Hindu Moon God at his shrine in Benares, the gigantic diamond apparently glowing with its own light in the centre or "third eye" of the statue's forehead. This illustration does not give the viewer the sense of the deity's statue being in the confined space of a Hindu temple. Rather, the American illustrator enshrouds the statue in the voluminous smoke of the incense-burner (lower left), so that the idol and its devotees exist outside conventional space.< In contrast, William Sharp has taken pains to realise a portion of the novel to which the Harper's illustrators would not have had access in December 1867 when they were preparing their wood-engravings for the opening numbers. Sharp quite correctly shows the multiple-armed deity riding a hornless antelope. and whereas the 1868 illustrators conceived of the Hindu Moon deity as a sort of Buddha, Sharp conveys a sense of mythological richness in the smiling good and his tranquil beast of burden.
Left: The American serial's 4 January 1868 Headnote vignette showing the Brahmins and the idol of the Hindu Moon God. Centre: An expanded version of the same illustration, The Idol of the Moon God in the Peter Fenelon Collier edition (1900). Right: An expanded view of the original 1868 vignette, The Diamond and the Ganges (1874, second edition, Chapter 11, p. 90.). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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Above: William Jewett's original vignette from 4 January 1868 was reformatted as the frontispiece for the Peter Fenelon Collier Collected Works of Wilkie Collins (1900), The Idol of the Moon God. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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.
Richardson, Betty. "Prisons and Prison Reform." Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, ed. Sally Mitchell. London and New York: Garland, 1988. Pp. 638-640.
Stewart, J. I. M. "Introduction." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 7-24.
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 18 October 2016