The Moonstone (Text)

The Moonstone (Text)

Published in Charles Dickens' journal All The Year Round, Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" stands alone on the page of the publication, giving the reader the opportunity to appreciate the text on it's own. In this section Betteredge receives a handwritten letter stating that Rachel Verinder will not allow her room to be searched by Seargeant Cuff. Collins writes “At last, Samuel came in, not with the keys, but with a morsel of paper for me… There were two or three lines on the paper, written in pencil by my lady. They informed me that Miss Rachel flatly refused to have her wardrobe examined.” (Collins 110). This shows the emergence of correspondence within Victorian culture. Collins’ novel is full of these moments, or characters interacting through the written word in various positions and for various reasons. Miss Clack relies heavily on small printed letters or “Tracts” to spread the word of Christianity. Mr. Blake and Miss Clack correspond back and forth through letters in her section of the narrative, as does John Candy in his letter to Mr. Blake. The novel itself could be consider not only a narrative, but a correspondence between the author and his readership, since the novel came out in the serializations, including the one pictured here. Yet this theme goes unamplified in Dickens’ serialization.

Archives and Special Collections

Calgary: University of Calgary

Semchuk, Sydney

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English

Text

Print publication