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Acknowledgments This book would never have been written without Catherine Spooner. I was busy researching intersections between Victorian fiction and the rise of mass picture identification when she suggested that I take a look at first-wave Gothic fiction. It turned out to be the mother ship of literary picture identification; thus, what began as a chapter became a book—this book. Catherine is part of an immensely supportive research environment in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. Colleagues Michael Greaney and Arthur Bradley offered advice on theoretical issues; Elizabeth Oakley-Brown steered me toward picture identification in Shakespeare’s works; other colleagues raised helpful questions and provided feedback on presentations of my research in progress. Even so, this book has had only one reader—the anonymous reviewer assigned by the Johns Hopkins University Press, who read two drafts of the manuscript . Attentive to every level, layer, and detail, the reader has improved the book immeasurably. I am most grateful. Thanks, too, to Brian MacDonald for superb copy-editing. My research would not have been possible without Google Books, ECO, Project Gutenberg, the University of Virginia online collection, and other electronic libraries, since I had no research leave or funding to visit archives and libraries. These resources greatly enrich this book, as do the illustrations provided by the Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery (London), the National Museum of Wales, the Yale Center for British Art, the Dayton Art Institute, the Library of Congress, and Harvard University and Michigan University libraries. (Special thanks to Jack Censer and Margaret Kieckhefer for help with locating an elusive illustration.) Finally, in addition to my Lancaster University colleagues who have been so supportive, I want to thank the family, friends, and neighbors who have made xii ac k now l e d g m e n t s the years in which I have been writing this book such happy ones: my children, Lucas Denman, Christina Denman Pedder, and Gazz Pedder (plus all the Pedder clan); my brother, Kenton Sparks; my neighbors, Edward Phillips, the Bells, and the Dalton girls, and, of course, Nigel Johnson. ...

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