ABSTRACT
Victorian fiction, the dominant literary form of its period, retains its popularity for the modem reader, whether in the academy or the living room. For university courses it is packaged in annotated single-volume texts; it is transmitted into the home in televised adaptations that to a greater or lesser degree capture the spirit, if not the substance, of their originals. But rarely do we receive Victorian novels as their first readers received them. Those bulky paperbacks that intimidate even the most assiduous students do little justice to the processes of serialization and instalment that allowed the original readers to engage with the narrative over an extended period of time; their covers, designed by the marketing men, reflect a huge culture shift from either the paper covers designed for the original numbers of Thackeray or Dickens, or the often beautifully gilded and embossed bindings of Victorian volumes. And while we are aware ofthe contribution made by the illustrators to Victorian fiction their work is rarely produced with the quality of the originals, or with regard to the importance of its placement within the text. All of these features were important matters for the Victorian publishing industry: for them, as for us, fiction was a cultural product in a very competitive market-place. But they were also part of the total reading experience, and that is something that we tend to neglect. In this essay I shall examine three well-known Victorian fictional texts, trying to keep in mind that original reading experience. In particular I want to consider the conjunction of illustration and text as it reflects one of the more potent cultural motifs ofthe period, the inter-relationship of femininity and menace. I begin with the most famous projection of all of this theme, Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, since I believe it to have set a pattern which can be traced through English fiction at least until the end of her creator's career, and to some extent beyond it.
