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Series
Series in Victorian Studies
Description
In the early 1800s, books were largely unillustrated. By the 1830s and 1840s, however, innovations in wood- and steel-engraving techniques changed how Victorian readers consumed and conceptualized fiction. A new type of novel was born, often published in serial form, one that melded text and image as partners in meaning-making.
These illustrated serial novels offered Victorians a reading experience that was both verbal and visual, based on complex effects of flash-forward and flashback as the placement of illustrations revealed or recalled significant story elements. Victorians’ experience of what are now canonical novels thus differed markedly from that of modern readers, who are accustomed to reading single volumes with minimal illustration. Even if modern editions do reproduce illustrations, these do not appear as originally laid out. Modern readers therefore lose a crucial aspect of how Victorians understood plot—as a story delivered in both words and images, over time, and with illustrations playing a key role.
In The Plot Thickens, Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge uncover this overlooked narrative role of illustrations within Victorian serial fiction. They reveal the intricacy and richness of the form and push us to reconsider our notions of illustration, visual culture, narration, and reading practices in nineteenth-century Britain.
Copyright Statement
The Plot Thickens © 2019 by Ohio University Press is licensed under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Language
eng
ISBN
9780821446492
Publication Date
12-17-2018
Publisher
Ohio University Press
City
Athens
Keywords
Victorian culture, visual culture, Victorian era, serial novels, serial fiction, illustrated novels, Victorian illustration, book history
Disciplines
Book and Paper | History | Illustration | Literature in English, British Isles | Reading and Language
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Leighton, Mary Elizabeth and Surridge, Lisa, "The Plot Thickens : Illustrated Victorian Serial Fiction from Dickens to Du Maurier" (2018). Ohio University Press Open Access Books. 88.
https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/88
Included in
Book and Paper Commons, History Commons, Illustration Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Reading and Language Commons