The Plot Thickens. Lisa Surridge
Jillian Sparks at the Queen’s University Library.
We also extend our thanks to the many colleagues from UVic, the Université Paul-Valéry–Montpellier III, Simon Fraser University, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at UVic (where we have taught and been taught), EdJoWriWe (Edinburgh Journal Article Writing Week at the University of Edinburgh), the North American Victorian Studies Association, the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States, the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, and the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada who have supported this project through their questions, suggestions, and encouragement over many conferences, colloquia, workshops, and years. Particular thanks go to Sophia Andres, Genie Babb, Susan Brown, Margaret Cameron, Claire Carlin, Hélène Cazes, Alison Chapman, Julie Codell, Simon Cooke, Susan Doyle, Erin Ellerbeck, Rebecca Gagan, Kristen Guest, Matt Huculak, Linda K. Hughes, Janelle Jenstad, Chris Keep, Erin Kelly, Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Erik Kwakkel, Margaret Linley, Brian Maidment, Bob Patten, Nicole Shukin, Marie-Ève Thérenty, and Vanessa Warne.
We are immensely thankful to the University of Victoria Special Collections librarians who have, for over a decade, supported our research and teaching related to this book. The UVic archives have provided an invaluable research space for us and a training ground for our students, both undergraduate and graduate. Our deep gratitude goes out to librarians Heather Dean, John Frederick, Lawrence Hong, Jaqui Thompson, and Lara Wilson.
We are hugely grateful to the anonymous reviewers for Ohio University Press, whose generous, intelligent engagement with our initial manuscript helped us to produce the final version of our book. It has been a pleasure working with the editors and staff at Ohio University Press: Joseph McLaughlin and Elizabeth Miller, editors of the Series in Victorian Studies, whose support of our project we deeply appreciate; Rick Huard, who shepherded the project to press; Sally Welch, who generously answered many questions; Sally Bennett Boyington, who carefully copyedited the manuscript; Nancy Basmajian, managing editor, who saw the book through to print; and the many people involved in layout and design.
We offer thanks to our student research assistants, whose resourcefulness and intelligence inspire us always: Michael Carelse, Amy Coté, Jack Dempster, Olivia Ferguson, Renée Gaudet, Eric Henwood-Greer, Kelsey Kilbey, Sam McFarlane, and Renee Vander Meulen.
Finally, for their love and support during this project, which is older than some of them, we thank our family members: Sean, Jacob, and Jessie Hier; John, Michael, and Greg Adams; and Marie Surridge.
Abbreviations
| AB | George Eliot. Adam Bede. Edited by Valentine Cunningham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Originally published 1859. |
| CP | Elizabeth Gaskell. Cousin Phillis. Cornhill Magazine, November 1863–February 1864. |
| DC | Charles Dickens. The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery. (Which He Never Meant to Be Published on Any Account.) London: Bradbury and Evans, May 1849–November 1850. |
| FMC | Thomas Hardy. Far from the Madding Crowd. Cornhill Magazine, January–December 1874. |
| GG | Charles Reade. Griffith Gaunt. Argosy, December 1865–November 1866. |
| JS | William Harrison Ainsworth. Jack Sheppard. Bentley’s Miscellany, January 1839–February 1840. |
| LL | Wilkie Collins. The Law and the Lady. Graphic, 26 September 1874–13 March 1875. |
| MM | Dinah Mulock Craik. Mistress and Maid. Good Words, January–December 1862. |
| NHM | Charles Warren Adams. The Notting Hill Mystery. Once a Week, November 1862–January 1863. |
| PI | George Du Maurier. Peter Ibbetson. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June–December 1891. |
| PP | Charles Dickens. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Containing a Faithful Record of the Perambulations, Perils, Travels, Adventures, and Sporting Transactions of the Corresponding Members. London: Chapman and Hall, March 1836–October 1837. |
| SH | Anthony Trollope. The Small House at Allington. Cornhill Magazine, September 1862–April 1864. |
| TOL | William Harrison Ainsworth. The Tower of London: A Historical Romance. London: Richard Bentley, January–December 1840. |
| TOTC | Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. Edited by Richard Maxwell. London: Penguin, 2000. Originally published 1859. |
| TOTC AYR | Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. All the Year Round, April–November 1859. |
| TOTC HW | Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. Harper’s Weekly, 7 May–3 December 1859. |
| VF | William Makepeace Thackeray. Vanity Fair: Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society. London: Bradbury and Evans, January 1847–July 1848. |
| WD | Elizabeth Gaskell. Wives and Daughters. Cornhill Magazine, August 1864–January 1866. |
The Plot Thickens
FIG. 0.0 Hands holding uncut serial version of David Copperfield. Photograph by Lisa Surridge.
INTRODUCTION
Material Matters
The Illustrated Victorian Serial Novel
This book starts with two pictures. The first, the cover image, is a painting of a Victorian woman holding a slim orange-gold volume in her lap. The year is 1873. The woman is Effie Millais, wife of the famous painter John Everett Millais.1 The volume is the Cornhill Magazine, an illustrated monthly journal launched by Smith, Elder in January 1860, which, from its first issue, became a major venue for her husband’s illustrations for fiction and poetry. The Cornhill’s wood-engraved wrapper (fig. 0.1) depicts scenes of plowing, sowing, threshing, and harvesting—a visual pun on the publisher’s original location at 65 Cornhill Street in London and a metaphor for the magazine’s ambition to harvest the best of contemporary literature for its readers. If the issue that Effie holds likewise dates from 1873, then, depending on the month, it might contain prose by Charles Kingsley, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Leslie Stephen, or Eliza Lynn Linton and wood-engraved illustrations by George Du Maurier, Marcus Stone, or Luke Fildes. The magazine’s featured fiction—two serials per monthly issue—combined text and image, usually with one full-page wood engraving and one chapter initial leading the reader’s eye into the text.
The second image, the one facing this page, shows a pair of hands holding a slim Victorian volume. The year is 2018. The hands belong to our research assistant Michael