Illustrations by F. A. Fraser for Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone: A Romance" (1890)

F. A. Fraser's Eight Illustrations for The Moonstone: A Romance (from the 1890 Chatto & Windus edition)

Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Lakehead University

These full-page wood-engravings face the page of text illustrated, so that the reader encounters word and image simultaneously, "reading" one against the other throughout the complementary pages. For a volume containing 434 pages, the novel is hardly as abundantly illustrated as the American first edition, but introduces the reader to visualisations of all the principal characters, including the cousins on military service in India in Fraser's initial plate; the three Brahmins and their clairvoyant child (Fraser's third plate); Sergeant Cuff and the gardeners (Fraser's fourth plate); the Sergeant with his alterego, Betteredge, the butler (Fraser's fifth plate); Rachel Verinder, her mother, Godfrey Abelwhite, and the censorious Miss Clack (Fraser's seventh plate); the male protagonist, Franklin Blake (Fraser's final two illustrations); and, indistnctly, the attorney, Mr. Bruff, watching from the shadows (Fraser's eighth plate). Significant by their absences are the anguished servant, Rosanna Spearman, Betteredge's daughter, Mr. Candy, and Ezra Jennings.

Title or text illustrated	Page	Chapter
Frontispiece by one of the leading illustrators of the age, George Du Maurier, "Do you think a young lady's advice worth having?"	94	ch. 12
"A cry inside hurried me into a room which appeared to serve as an armoury. A third Indian, mortally wounded, was sinking at the feet of a mnan whose back was towards me.".	4	Prologue.
"The Indian — first touching the boy's head and making signs over it in the air — then said, "Look!"	17	Ch. 3
"One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses."	90	Ch. 12
""The Sergeant pointed to the boot in the footmark, without saying a word."	144	Ch. 19
"He had just time to notice that the arm around his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was thrown helpless on the floor."	183	Second Period. "First Narrative." Chapter 1
"She stopped, ran across the room — and fell on her knees at her mother's feet."	195	Second Period. "First Narrative." Chapter 1
""You villain, I saw you take the Diamond with my own eyes."	317	Chapter 7
"He took the mock Diamond out with his right hand."	392	"Fourth Narrative. Extracted from the Journal of Ezra Jennings."

Related Materials

William Jewett's Sixty-six Ilustrations for Collins's The Moonstone in the Harper's Weekly Serial (4 January through 8 August, 1868)
The Moonstone and British India (1857, 1868, and 1876)
The Moonstone in Serial and Triple-Decker Publication
Detection and Disruption inside and outside the 'quiet English home' in The Moonstone
"Do you think a young lady's advice worth having?" — p. 94.
Illustrations by John French Sloan for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone: A Romance (1908)
Illustrations by Alfred Pearse for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1910)
Illustrations by William Sharp for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1946)

Bibliography

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.

________. The Moonstone: A Romance. All the Year Round. 1 January-8 August 1868.

_________. The Moonstone: A Novel. With 19 illustrations. New York & London: Harper and Brothers, 1868, rpt. 1874.

_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. Illustrated by George Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. London: Chatto and Windus, 1890.

_________. The Moonstone, Parts One and Two. The Works of Wilkie Collins, vols. 5 and 6. New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1900.

_________. 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. With forty-nine illustrations by William Sharp. New York: Doubleday, 1946.

_________. The Moonstone: A Romance. With nine illustrations by Edwin La Dell. London: Folio Society, 1951.

Farmer, Steve. "Introduction" to Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1999. Pp. 8-34.

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

Lonoff, Sue. Chapter 7: "The Moonstone and Its Audience." Wilkie Collins and His Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship. New York: AMS Studies in the Nineteenth Century, 1982. Pp. 170-227.

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.

Robinson, Kenneth. "Chapter 12: 'The Moonstone'." Wilkie Collins: A Biography London: The Bodley Head, 1951. Pp. 200-224.

Stewart, J. I. M. "A Note on Sources." Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, rpt. 1973. Pp. 527-8.

Created 19 August 2016
Last updated 12 August 2024