City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 1978 Wilkie Collins and His Victorian Readers: A Study in the Rhetoric of Authorship Sue Lonoff The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2198 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INFORMATION TO USERS This malarial was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. 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University Microfilms International 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 USA St. John's Road, Tyler's Green High Wycombe, Bucks, England HP10 8HR 7 * 1 * 1 3 5 LONOFF, SUE ANN WXtRXE COLLIN# AND NX# VICTORIAN READER$I ITUtfYlN THE RHETORIC OF AUTHORlHXR, cxty u n iv e r s it y OF NEN YORK, FH ,0», UTS UnrIrtversitv MiadrMms International 3oo n zees road. ann arb o r, mi 48t06 © 1978 SUE ANN LONOFF ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WILKIE COLLINS AND HIS VICTORIAN READERS: A STUDY IN THE RHETORIC OF AUTHORSHIP by SUE LONOFF A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 1978 This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. [signature] ~T ^ ------------date Chairman, Examining Committee [signature] date Executive Officer [signature] Alfred Kazin Q Supervisory Committee The City University of New York Acknowledgments In preparing this dissertation, I have been exceptionally fortu­ nate in finding advisors, consultants, and librarians whose help has been invaluable. I wish to thank Michael Tirako and Robert A. Colby for their cogent advice and suggestions, Alfred Kazin and Ellen Moers for reading the manuscript at various stages, and Irving Howe for preliminary advice. I am grateful to Robert F. Ashley and Walter Kendrick for making manuscript copies of their forthcoming work available to me, to Peter Caracciolo, Morton Cohen, E. R. Gregory, and Kenneth Robinson for th e ir generous answers to my questions, and to Muriel Bennett, whose capacity for taking pains Wilkie Collins would have appreciated. I am indebted to Herbert F.T. Cahoon and Evelyn W. Semler of the Pierpont Morgan Library, Alexander Wainwright of the Morris L. Parrish Collection at Princeton University, William Ingoldsby of the Huntington Library, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Reade, Theodore Greeder of the Fales Collection at New York University, Nancy Coffin of the Robert H. Taylor Collection, and the staffs of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the B ritish Library, the Houghton Library a t Harvard U niversity, and Sotheby's (London) for giving me access to C o llin s's le tte r s and manu­ scripts. Indirectly, but no less gratefully, I have benefitted from letters at the University of Illinois at Urbana and the University of Texas Collection at Austin. Above all, I want to express my gratitude to John de Cuevas, without whose editorial help and general encourage­ ment I could not have completed this project. iv Table of Concents Chapter Page I. Background 1 II. Collins's Views of Fiction 26 III. Readers Who Affected Collins'sAttitudes 56 Charles Dickens 56 Readers in Particular 69 Readers in General 79 IV. The Reader-Oriented World of Collins's Novels 99 Balance and A ntithesis 118 V. Collins at Play 141 VI. The Moonstone and Its Audience 173 Sources and Antecedents 178 Plot and C haracterization 193 Humor and Sexuality 214 The Dark Side of The Moonstone 223 Appendix A. The Novels of Wilkie Collins 256 B. Synopsis of The Moonstone 258 C. The S erial Divisions of The Moonstone 261 Bibliography 264 v P reface Wilkie Collins was famous for beginning his books with Prefaces that explained and defended his motives and his methods. In beginning this study of Collins and his readers with a Preface, 1 deliberately follow his example; but my aims are rather different. First, 1 wish to delimit the scope of my investigation. Although much remains to be said about Collins's short stories and plays, this study is confined to his novels and to the Prefaces, articles, and let­ ters that articulate his views of fiction. Again, although Collins had a large Continental and American following, I have concentrated here on his relations with the British reading public because they seem to me to have had the most decisive effect on his work. Second, 1 want to explain my choice of texts and the documentation. While Collins issued his f i r s t English editions through a v ariety of publishers and only signed a contract with Chatto and Windus for a uni­ form edition in 1875, Harper and Brothers became his American publisher early in his career, and relations between them remained cordial. Col­ lins promptly and punctiliously corrected the proofs that Harper sent him. "Your careful and regular transm ission of copy on the various books vAiich we have published for you has frequently elicited the grateful admiration which is naturally felt by us as practical printers for authors who are never behindhand," they wrote him in 1872 (J. H. Harper, The House of Harper [New York: Harper, 1912], p. 346). When he announced his intention of coming to America in 1873, they prepared a uniform edition v i of his work and issued it in 1873-74, adding subsequent novels over the years. This Harper Library Edition, which he dedicated "to the American people," is the one I cite whenever possible. The only drawback to using this edition occurs in connection with The Moonstone, a novel he revised after the Harper text was established. But few of these revi­ sions are substantial, and where the later edition differs materially, I indicate the changes in brackets in my text. (See also Ch. II, n. 18 below.) For later novels that Harper did not publish, or novels that I could not obtain in this edition, I have used the Peter Fenelon Collier Edition, which is more complete but less reliable. Since neither series is readily accessible to modern readers (though the recent AMS reprint series follows the Collier pagination), I have indicated chapters ra th e r than page numbers a fte r my quotations. This practice, however, raises problems of its own. Collins rarely numbered his chapters consecutively, and his tex tu al divisions vary from novel to novel. Some are divided into books and chapters, some into scenes and entr'actes, still others into narratives and journals. Thus the citations are more than occasionally awkward and intrusive. To shorten them, I have taken the liberty of abbreviating and of converting numerals from Roman to Arabic where such altern ativ es seemed clearer. In quoting from Collins's letters I have tried to retain his punctuation, which is sometimes erratic and hard to decipher. Where the letters have already appeared in print, I have generally adopted the published orthography and indicated both of my sources. Permission to quote from the letters in the Morris L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists, Princeton University Library, has been granted by the Curator. v i i Permission to quote from the letter to le Baron Ernouf has been granted by the Houghton Library, Harvard University. v i i i Chapter I Background Wilkie Collins was thirteen when Victoria came to the throne, twenty-seven in the year of the Great Exhibition (with two early novels behind him),^ and at sixty-five, one of the last survivors from the great age of Victorian fiction.