18. For example, to describe how his own illustrations for Vanity Fair light up the text, Thackeray states in “Before the Curtain,” the preface to Vanity Fair, that the serial is “brilliantly illuminated with the Author’s own candles” (VF, Oxf. 2). Martin Meisel explains in Realizations that after the 1820s, the meaning of “illustration” shifted from verbal enrichment or annotation to pictorial re-creation and/or enhancement of a text (30, 54).
19. Vol. 2 features works published throughout the long nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic by, for example, Jane Austen and Mary Shelley at the beginning of the 1800s; the Brontë sisters, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and Lewis Carroll in the mid-1800s; and Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde in the later decades through the fin de siècle.
20. Although Austen’s novels originally appeared without illustrations, lavishly illustrated versions came out at the end of the nineteenth century with drawings by Hugh Thomson in 1894 and Henry and Charles Brock in 1898. Recalling Trilby-mania and Pickwick mania, Austen’s novels have sparked a commercial boom with a host of products showing her image or name including T-shirts, note cards, mugs, book bags, specialty teas, finger puppets, and even a Jane Austen action figure. A line of Jane Austen inspired jewelry as well as cookbooks, coloring books, and Regency clothing (with some items named after various characters in Pride and Prejudice) are also available for purchase.
21. For Northanger Abbey and Emma, Janet Lee worked with Nancy Butler as the collaborating artist, and for Sense and Sensibility, Butler collaborated with Sonny Liew, one of the cover artists for the Marvel Illustrated Pride and Prejudice.
22. The Romance Writers of America sponsor the RITA Award, the highest mark of distinction in romance fiction.
23. Covers from the individual issues appear in the back of the book version of Marvel’s graphic novel adaptations of Jane Austen’s fiction.
24. For the Pride and Prejudice graphic novel installments, Elizabeth appears on all five covers designed by Sonny Liew and Dennis Calero, and Darcy appears on two of them.
25. Other Pride and Prejudice graphic novel adaptations include a simplified retelling edited by Hilary Burningham and published by Evans Brothers Ltd. in 2004; and an Eye Classics edition adapted by Ian Edginton, illustrated by Robert Deas, and published by SelfMadeHero in 2011. The first two titles in Udon’s literary classics line are Pride and Prejudice and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862). See Udon Entertainment’s website at
26. The two-tone cover of the Udon Pride and Prejudice adaptation is pink and plum to appeal to a female demographic. A picture of Elizabeth Bennet dressed in pink graces the front of this hardback book; eight large pink roses frame Elizabeth, reading a book on a rose-colored fainting couch. The back cover shows Elizabeth Bennet in a different lacy, pink dress holding a rose to her heart. A dashing Mr. Darcy approaches Elizabeth from behind; he is wearing a fitted jacket and trousers that accentuate his shapely physique. Text on the back cover claims, “this bold new manga adaptation” will bring young adult readers “All of the joy, humor, and romance of Jane Austen’s original story.”
27. Interestingly, for the Campfire adaptation, Sach and Nagulakonda include a list of the names of the five Bennet daughters; one panel has Jane’s name followed by a check mark, and the subsequent panel has Jane’s check mark crossed off and Elizabeth’s name checked to magnify how quickly “Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth” (30).
28. Elizabeth wins this verbal duel, but she expresses worry in a thought bubble on the following page: “I am certain that Lady Catherine will now call on Mr. Darcy to obtain from him the promise that I have refused her. Will he be swayed by her?” (98).
29. Campfire’s adaptation also enhances characterization. A prime example is the scene of Jane Bennet riding to Netherfield Park on horseback in the rain, an episode that has attracted past illustrators of Pride and Prejudice. In the source text, Mrs. Bennet denies Jane her request for a carriage since it likely will rain, and Jane will have to spend the night at Mr. Bingley’s home, Netherfield Park. The source text indicates that Jane protests slightly, “‘I had much rather go in the coach’” (Austen 40)—a line that Sach includes verbatim (20)—but Sach and Nagulakonda develop Jane’s personality to convey a stronger protest. Nagulakonda shows annoyance on the faces of Jane and her horse as they trek through pelting streaks of rain in a verdant but puddled landscape. Sach adds a thought bubble that works interdependently with the graphic: “Oh Mama, you are impossible!” (21). With these five words, Jane sheds some of her cloying sweetness and expresses feelings that the modern reader can relate to.
30. Graphic Classics, as part of Barron’s Educational Series, aims to “introduce many of the world’s literary masterpieces to young readers. Elementary and secondary school teachers will value these books as a way to make great novels and plays accessible to their students—especially to those students who resist reading.” See
31. Classical Comics produces several versions of their graphic classics—Original Text, Quick Text American English, and Quick Text British English; however, the colored artwork is the same for all three scripts. Original Text retains much of the classic’s pure language, although the adapter truncates the text to fit into word balloons, thought bubbles, and captions. Quick Text, in contrast, updates the classic into modern American English or modern British English to make it a “fast-paced read” (F. Macdonald 144).
32. Franz Anton Mesmer discovered the technique named after him in 1779; mesmerism first entered England in the early 1800s and gained force in the 1840s when John Elliotson, founder of the London Phrenological Society, promoted interest in mesmerism via pamphlets and demonstrations. Telepathic dreaming, mesmerism, and clairvoyant communication gained popularity in the later nineteenth century as Freud explored free association through dreams, Gertrude Stein investigated automatic writing in William James’s laboratory, and Henri Bergson explored memory in Matière et mémoire (1896). These psychic phenomena surface as literary strategies that Du Maurier uses in his late nineteenth-century fiction, as I explore in chapter 4 and my article “Turning Life into Literature,” but are also anticipated in the work of the Brontë sisters.
33. See Margaret Homans’s “Dreaming of Children: Literalisation in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights” included in the St. Martin’s edition of Jane Eyre, edited by Heather Glen, 147–67.
34. There are several adaptations of A Christmas Carol (1843), originally illustrated by John Leech. The Classical Comics adaptation also makes palpable the poverty of Dickens’s London through the chilling presentation of Ignorance and Want (S. M. Wilson 94).
35. In the Francophone world, graphic novels (called bande dessinée) assume the status of literature and reach a sophisticated adult audience; not surprisingly, this Trollope adaptation, written in English, was published in a French edition months before its British debut.
36. In an e-mail interview (8 July 2015), Francis Mosley explains the approach to illustrating Trollope as follows:
Well I try to look for scenes where there is an interesting landscape or interior (a nineteenth-century sorting office, for example) and give a sense of light (or dark) that is atmospheric in the hope of giving a reader a sense of being there. Having scenes in a gold mining camp in Australia is a gift compared to the many Trollope novels where just about all the action takes place in drawing rooms. There are only so many viewpoints in a room and only so many ways of arranging the furniture or decoration. That said, limitations can be the mother of invention, and “picturesque” scenes can have their own pitfalls. As a general rule I try to avoid the more dramatic episodes as they can come across as wooden or frozen in comparison to what the writing is describing, and there is also the additional danger of being in conflict with the reader’s imagination.
37. For more discussion of Trollop
e’s decision not to disclose freely that John Caldigate and Euphemia Smith are living in sin, see Diana Archibald’s Domesticity, Imperialism, and Emigration in the Victorian Novel, 98–99.
38. Before Dispossession appeared in English, I obtained the French version and interviewed Grennan about his adaptation of John Caldigate.
39. See a recap of Grennan’s presentation to the reading group of the Trollope Society posted on 4 July 2014 in The Trollope Jupiter,
40. Critics commonly associate Fagin’s characterization with the notorious early nineteenth-century Jewish “receiver of stolen goods,” Ikey (Isaac) Solomons; this connection makes the religious stereotype more disturbingly real. See the Oxford World’s Classics 1999 edition of Oliver Twist with an introduction and notes by Stephen Gill, 467.
41. For an examination of Dickens’s oscillation in his characterization of Fagin, see my essay “Cruikshank’s Illustrative Wrinkle in Oliver Twist’s Misrepresentation of Class” in Book Illustrated, edited by C. Golden, 117–46.
42. For discussion of Fagin’s devilish nickname, see the Oxford World’s Classics 1999 edition of Oliver Twist with an introduction and notes by Stephen Gill, 467.
43. Dickens turns Fagin into a character who deserves to swing from the rope and leaves Fagin contemplating his own death, “To be hanged by the neck till he was dead” (OT, Oxf. 1982 343). Cruikshank, in turn, captures Fagin’s crazed, demonic look in one of Twist’s best-known plates, “Fagin in the Condemned Cell” (see fig. 16, ch. 2, 75).
44. The visual depiction of the stereotypic Jew derives from eighteenth-century graphic satirists, notably William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson; Eisner demonstrates this resemblance in the appendix to Fagin the Jew.
45. It is curious that Eisner has the Jewish Adele convert to Christianity when marrying Oliver Twist Brownlow (FTJ 115).
46. The IDW adaptation of Twist scripted by Philippe Chanoinat and illustrated by David Cerquiera abridges a great deal of the classic, compromising the authenticity to the original, but it offers a sympathetic rendition of Fagin akin to Eisner’s in Fagin the Jew. Nancy and Sikes are greatly eclipsed—Nancy does not risk her life to meet Mr. Brownlow and Rose Maylie on London Bridge, and Sikes does not murder Nancy. Monks is cut entirely from the novel. Worse, Chanoinat also invents plot details. Following the robbery of the Maylies’ household, Oliver recuperates at Mr. Brownlow’s home, not at the Maylies, and “The police arrested the whole gang” (52)—presumably meaning Sikes, Monks, and Fagin. Sikes (wanted for robbery, not murder in this adaptation) does not attempt to destroy his dog or run through the streets of Jacob’s Island onto the roof of Fagin’s den.
Nonetheless, this adaptation deserves mentioning because text and image interdependently develop Fagin’s character in ways that challenge Dickens’s source text. Chanoinat grants Fagin decency in the final pages and elevates his importance by concluding with Fagin’s demise. Mr. Brownlow tells Oliver that “This Mr. Fagin, in a surge of generosity, totally exonerated you by explaining to the police what he and his friends had subjected you to. Which just shows that even the worst men have a piece of humanity left in them” (52). Fagin is not labeled derogatorily as the “Jew” but called “Mr. Fagin,” a title of respect, and the word “surge” suggests an outpouring of good-heartedness. Cerquiera adds to this characterization in depicting a tearful, grateful Oliver visiting Fagin in jail; Fagin is also weeping, and the two are embracing (OT, Chanoinat 53), showing Fagin surely has a “surge” of “humanity left in” him.
47. Campfire explains that its graphic novels are aural and visual: “It is night-time in the forest. A campfire is crackling, and storytelling has begun”
48. Not only its brevity, but the following features suggest the Campfire adaptation of Oliver Twist is suitable for the young adult reader: a page of pictorial introductions of all the characters, a section entitled “Bringing Dickens’s Times to Life,” and the use of an occasional footnote within one of the panels to explain a term, such as “charity boy” (Johnson 14).
49. There are small differences between the illustrations for the original serial and the graphic novel; for example, in the adaptation, Oliver’s little table is directly below the window, which is curtained but not latticed.
50. The source text reads: “what was that, which sent the blood tingling to his heart, and deprived him of his voice, and of power to move!”; Dickens continues, “It was but an instant, a glance, a flash before his eyes; and they were gone. But they had recognised him, and he them” (OT, Oxf. 1982 217).
51. Papercutz markets this edition to middle-school readers to present Dickens’s classic to a younger audience.
52. In the Campfire adaptation, Mrs. Mann says to Oliver in a private aside, “And watch your tongue, boy!” (Johnson 7), which undercuts her fake public farewell—“Oh, my dear sweet Oliver! Be good to Mr. Bumble, my lamb!” (7). Here, “lamb” is a false term of endearment, for Oliver is truly just a common “boy,” a cog in the wheel of the workhouse system.
53. In Dickens’s text, a comma follows “sir,” not a period (OT, Oxf. 1982 10).
54. Papercutz keeps intact the novel’s most famous phrase, “Please, sir, I want some more,” and grants that critical scene thirty panels (Dauvillier 19–22). From the source text it includes the choosing of straws, Oliver asking politely for “more” when the lot falls to him, and the reaction of the fat cook, who, in this adaptation, throws Oliver into a cell and then calls for Mr. Bumble (reversing the order of this sequence in the source text). This version has a “Table of Contents” that lists all Dickens’s original lengthy chapter titles. Dauvillier often dumbs down Dickensian dialogue, transforming Dickens’s cutting satire of the parish rations of “one porringer, and no more—except on occasions of great public rejoicing” (OT, Oxf. 1982 9) to “We’re sick of eating gruel! And there’s not even enough of it!” (Dauvillier 19). Dauvillier’s colloquial diction like “Yuck” and “Hey” and sound effects like “BAM” and “SLAM” alongside Deloye’s cartoon-style graphics at times compromise the adaptation’s faithfulness to the original, despite the famous request for more gruel.
55. Dickens devotes several paragraphs to Oliver’s “roused” spirit and the resulting physical and emotional transformation that occurs: “His breast heaved; his attitude was erect; his eye bright and vivid; his whole person changed, as he stood glaring over the cowardly tormentor who now lay crouching at his feet” (OT, Oxf. 1982 36). Cruikshank shows a bright-eyed Oliver with erect posture and an enormous fist that gives concrete form to Oliver’s “collecting his whole force into one heavy blow” (36), knocking blubbering Noah to the ground. Papercutz devotes over thirty panels to this scene (36–39) and includes motion lines and sound effects to show Oliver flying into a rage as he hits Noah for calling his mother a “trollop” (Dauvillier 36). Outcries and screams are part of Dickens’s text, but Papercutz intensifies the aural dimension by adding “BAM” four times in the panel where Oliver pummels Noah and “EEEEEEEEEE” to magnify Charlotte’s fright of Oliver’s power (37). The bolded sound effects reinforce how Oliver’s “whole person changed” (OT, Oxf. 1982 36).
56. Nagulakonda shows far greater adeptness than Cruikshank in drawing women, making Nancy comely as Dickens describes her: “They wore a good deal of hair: … They were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of colour in their faces; and looked quite stout and hearty” (OT, Oxf. 1982 57). Whereas Cruikshank’s Nancy has a sly expression, slovenly appearance, and a prematurely old and common face (see fig. 22, ch. 2, 87), Nagulakonda’s Nancy has attractive chestnut hair, expressive eyes, and a neat appearance. Indeed, Nagulakonda’s fallen Nancy and
genteel Rose Maylie look like “Two Sister-Women” (OT, Clarendon xxxvi).
57. Regrettably, in this adaptation Sikes shoots Nancy with the gun, rather than use it to strike her down (in the source text, Sikes decides not to shoot Nancy with the gun to avoid noise and detection). Campfire also drops out Rose Maylie’s handkerchief, an important textual detail exquisitely illustrated in the Papercutz version.
58. For discussion of Dickens’s term “Sister-Women” in the first descriptive chapter headline, see Kathleen Tillotson’s introduction to the Clarendon edition of Oliver Twist, xxxvi.
59. In The Scanty Meal, three horses and two pigeons are eating a very small portion of food. John Tenniel also created sequential comics for Punch, including “Mr. Spoonbill’s Experiences in the Art of Skating” (1855) (Burstein 10).
60. All the references to Moore and Reppion and Awano come from Dynamite’s first issue of Alice.
61. Regrettably, Nagulakonda, like Awano, gives Alice room to keep growing. Carroll more than any of the successive illustrators intensifies Alice’s claustrophobia in showing her to be literally pushing against the boundaries of a room suggested only by a rectangular box (see fig. 39A, ch. 3, 145).
62. Peacock feathers in this sequence, not mentioned in the text, provide a prop to measure how small Alice has become; the feathers appear to grow larger as Alice grows smaller and smaller and vocalizes her perplexity.
Bibliography
Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. 1839. Ed. Edward Jacobs and Manuela Mourão. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2007. Print.
———. “Jack Sheppard.” Bentley’s Miscellany. Illus. George Cruikshank. Vols. 5–7. Jan. 1839–Feb. 1840. Print.
Serials to Graphic Novels Page 34
