Front Page of All the Year Round, 8 August 1868 [Text]

This is the front page of the 8 August 1868 edition of All the Year Round. There is a marked contrast in the way that the American and the British front pages present the story; most importantly, All the Year Round emphasizes the story itself in a way that Harper’s Weekly does not. All the Year Round was a literary periodical, published by Charles Dickens himself, and so the emphasis on story is more natural than in Harper’s Weekly, which was more of a news periodical. The Moonstone also occupies the central place on the front page of the 8 August 1868 edition of All the Year Round. The Moonstone actually consistently appeared on the front page of All the Year Round, from January to August 1868, which one might attribute to the fact that Collins and Dickens were close friends, but Collins’ own name never actually appeared alongside the story, so Collins obviously did not receive any special attention from Dickens. All the Year Round emphasizes the story itself above all else; the lack of images emphasizes the actual text over visuals, and even the layout of the text on the page makes the story more readable, and more accessible, than in Harper’s Weekly.