The Transatlantic Moonstone: Part XII

                While both All the Year Round and Harper's Weekly contained the same text- The Moonstone- written by the same author, the text is represented, or "branded" , in very different ways between the two journals. The "brand" under which the text is represented presents a method of marketing the text to the journal's readers. The marketing of the text is based on what the audience would perceive as literary quality, as discussed by Moran in his essay about the marketing of authors in Time Magazine. "Whilst it is true that Time tended to profile authors with serious literary intent... its preoccupation with the author's ability to attract the major literary prizes and the commercial book clubs betrays a notion of literary "quality" rooted in marketplace priorities" (Moran 352). Both All the Year Round, and Harper's Weekly adhere to this pattern as well though the emphasis on what part of the publication would best market the quality of the work differs drastically between them.

                 All the Year Round does not draw attention to the author of the text, but rather the text itself along with the publisher. The marketability of The Moonstone in this case is the journal in which it is published which was edited by another renowned writer of the time, Charles Dickens.

            Conversely, Harper's Weekly publishes The Moonstone under Wilkie Collins' name along with the title of another work by him. In this case the author is the marketable brand rather than the publisher. 

Moran, Joe. "The Author as a Brand Name: American Literary Figures   and the Time Cover Story." Journal of American Studies29.3 (1995): 349-63. ProQuest. Web. 4 Oct. 2015