Serials to Graphic Novels (PDF)

"e;A valuable and comprehensive survey of an enormous subject."e;--Paul Goldman, author of Reading Victorian Illustration, 1855-1875: Spoils of the Lumber Room"e;A marvelous overview of how and why illustrations became an integral part of Victorian fiction. Golden documents a remarkable continuity from early nineteenth-century caricatures to realistic portrait-based illustrations to current graphic rewritings of familiar classics."e;--Martha Vicinus, author of Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928"e;A capacious and synthetic work that draws on a wide variety of scholarship, a very impressive command of the history of book illustration, a huge array of visual and verbal texts, and (most important) a commitment to the genre as a genre in the history of literary and artistic form."e;--Peter Betjemann, author of Talking Shop: The Language of Craft in an Age of ConsumptionThe Victorian illustrated book came into being, flourished, and evolved during the nineteenth century. Catherine Golden offers a new framework for viewing the arc of this vibrant form and surveys the fluidity in styles of illustration in serial instalments, British and American periodicals, adult and children's literature, and--more recently--graphic novels.Golden examines widely recognized illustrated texts, such as The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Rabbit, and finds new expressions of this traditional genre in present-day graphic novel adaptations of the works of Austen, Dickens, and Trollope, as well as Neo-Victorian graphic novels like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. She explores the various factors that contributed to the early popularity of the illustrated book--the growth of commodity culture, a rise in literacy, new printing technologies--and how these ultimately created a mass market for new fiction.While existing scholarship on Victorian illustrators largely centers on the Household Edition of Dickens or the realist artists of the "e;Sixties,"e; notably Fred Barnard and John Tenniel, this volume examines the lifetime of the Victorian illustrated book. It also discusses how a particular canon has been refashioned and repurposed for new generations of readers.Catherine J. Golden, professor of English at Skidmore College, is author of several books, including Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing.