Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book by Catherine J. Golden, and: Drawing on the Victorians: The Palimpsest of Victorian and Neo-Victorian Graphic Texts ed. by Anna Maria Jones and Rebecca N. Mitchell (review)

Illustrated texts from the Victorian era challenge scholars to revisit how we understand text and context, inviting us to treat illustrations as primary works worthy of study. Such scrutiny requires us "to read images well," as Andrea Kaston Tange argues, "so we must learn to decode the visual register of their moment in time, including being attentive to layers of history and to the contemporary vocabulary through which such images participate in conversations" ("Nineteenth-Century British Childhoods," VIJ 39 [2011]: 48). Two recent books present scholars with avenues into the "layers of history" embedded within the graphic texts of the long nineteenth century. Serials to Graphic Novels examines the history of the Victorian illustrated book and offers periodicals researchers a new perspective on the evolving nature of Victorian illustrations, as well as providing a useful tool for teaching future scholars about these trends. Drawing on the Victorians goes beyond boundaries of genre, geography, and time to trace the complex history of graphic texts from the nineteenth century to our current moment.

Catherine J. Golden's Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book foregrounds "how illustrative styles are perpetuated and revised and a canon of illustrated books is refashioned for new generations of readers" (2). Rather than focusing on one moment or movement within the Victorian era, Golden examines the evolving norms of creation and publication for the illustrated book. She primarily aims to provide students and emerging scholars with a foundation in the (re)inscribed history of graphic illustration. In the introduction, she includes a succinct yet comprehensive overview of criticism related to the Victorian illustrated book from 1895 to 2016. While many of her references will be familiar to VPR readers, this section provides a useful guide for those new to the vocabulary and history of illustrated studies. Golden dives deeply into popular serials, such as Dickens's Pickwick Papers, but she spends less time discussing the role of serialization within periodicals themselves. Chapters three and four—"Realism, Victorian Material Culture, and the Enduring Caricature Tradition" and "Caricature and Realism: Fin-de-Siècle Developments of the Victorian Illustrated Book"—might be most useful for periodicals scholars, especially those interested in Punch. In chapter three, Golden explores the interplay between realism and caricature during the 1860s to draw attention to the "fluidity of aesthetics across illustrative periods" throughout the century (10). Chapter four assesses shifts in the marketplace that affected volume-form publications during the fin de siècle, using Punch artist George du Maurier as a case study to highlight the slippage between realism and caricature during the latter half of the century.

Throughout the book, Golden uses the illustrated works of canonical authors such as Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll to frame her analysis. But she also pulls the reader forward in time to discuss canonical works reimagined in the form of graphic novels, which "share marked similarities" to the Victorian illustrated book in "how they are composed and how we read them; both genres have developed from related word and image traditions and have interwoven origins" (187). Aiming for a wide audience of students as well as "those well versed in illustration studies," Golden suggests that she can offer a "methodological approach to connect illustrative styles across decades, genres and national borders" (4). Although Serials to Graphic Novels only lightly touches on the periodical as a publishing medium, it offers scholars a strong foundation in the historical "arc of a vibrant genre" (4). Furthermore, Golden discusses many illustrators within and beyond the periodicals marketplace, including...