Description
Book SynopsisIn 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 plotas a story delivered in both words and images, over time, and
Trade Review
“Leighton and Surridge do a magnificent job of illuminating the surprisingly important role of illustrations in serial fiction and challenging some of the assumptions that have dominated scholarly understanding of the serial novel. Building on a rich and growing body of scholarship on serial fiction, The Plot Thickens shows that attending to illustrations has the potential to transform our understanding of how Victorian readers consumed novels in parts.”
“This impressive study will undoubtedly shape the way Victorian studies scholars frame the topic of reading practices going forward, whether approaching it from the perspective of book history, art history, or literary studies.” * Victorian Periodicals Review *
