Front Page of Harper's Weekly, 8 August 1868 [Text]

This is the front page of the 8 August 1868 edition of Harper’s Weekly. Collins' “popularity [was such] with American readers that his name always appeared before any other novelist in Harper’s catalogues” (Leighton and Surridge 208), and such is also the case with The Moonstone. Collins’ name appears prominently at the start of the story, but not (unlike the British version) at the start of the periodical. Harper’s Weekly instead leads with the current news. They use the whole front page to illustrate the top news for the week of 8 August 1868, a flood in the Maryland area. These illustrations act as a sort of introduction to The Moonstone in Harper’s Weekly; specifically the illustrations of natural catastrophe on the front page ask readers to consider the outcome of the conspiracy around the moonstone in the novel, and to relate images of catastrophe to the conclusion of the novel, even if coincidentally (the editors obviously did not orchestrate a flood for literary effect). Leighton and Surridge would write that the images are “proleptic, anticipating the events of the letterpress to come” and intentionally guiding readers’ interpretations of those events (210). I will note also that the front page of Harper’s Weekly is generally less readable than the front page of All the Year Round: the page itself is too large, the text is too small, and the layout is too tight to encourage readers to actually read the whole installment, which adds to the idea that Harper’s Weekly is less interested in the story itself than All the Year Round.