Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book

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The 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 centres on the Household Edition of Dickens or the realist artists of the Sixties , 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.