Simon Cooke

The Victorian Web · Senior Editor and Trustee of the Victorian Web

A detailed examination of the book and magazine illustrations of the Victorian artist, Mary Ellen Edwards, focusing on her representation of domestic themes from a female perspective.

A detailed study of the famous 'Moxon Tennyson' of illustrated poems of 1857. The monograph sets out to revise traditional readings which stress importance of the book as a showcase for Pre-Raphaelite design by exploring the work of all of the illustrators involved in the project.

The first detailed examination of Warwick Goble's interpretive illustrations of Wells's text, exploring the ways in which the artist highlights notion of the 'alien'.

An examination of the life and art of the Victorian illustrator, William Small.

A chapter analysing George Du Maurier's writing about book illustration and argues that he applied his theories to his practice, especially in the illustrating of his own set of novels, Trilby, The Martian and Peter Ibbetson.

The illustrated texts appearing in The Cornhill Magazine have been the subject of detailed investigation. The composite novels of Trollope, Thackeray, Eliot, and Reade have been examined at length, and recent commentators have assessed the importance of the designs’ physical placement. However, other aspects of The Cornhill’s material form have rec...

A collection of essays exploring aspects of George Du Maurier's writing, criticism, and visual art.

A wide-ranging chapter examining representations of masculinity in Pre-Raphaelite illustration. The nature of Pre-Raphaelite creativity, the dangers of male sexuality and the domestic model favoured by some contributors are considered in detail. The 'Moxon Tennyson', 'Goblin Market' and Trolope's novels are explored with close reference to illustra...

A detailed analysis of the life and art of a 60s artist whose work was well-known in the Victorian period, but is largely forgotten today.

An afterword to Ruskin's moralized fairy-tale that explores Richard Doyle's illustrations and the contribution they make to the text's meanings.

A detailed examination of the role of painting and visual design in Le Fanu's fictions which explores the role of pictorial devices as a symbolic representation of key themes.

A series of essays exploring aspects of Victorian illustration.

In a reevaluation of that period in Victorian illustration known as 'The Sixties,' a distinguished group of international scholars consider the impact of illustration on the act of reading; its capacity to reflect, construct, critique and challenge its audience's values; its response to older graphic traditions; and its assimilation of foreign infl...

This essay explores Le Fanu's contributions to Dickens's periodical, All the Year Round. It considers the ways in which Le Fanu shaped his stories to satisfy the criteria demanded by the editor and focuses on his development of his classic study of mental illness, Green Tea, which, I argue, was heavily influenced by Dickens's treatment of anxiety i...

A detailed examination of the professional relationships between authors, artists, engravers and publishers and the impact of these collaborations on the production of illustrated magazines of the 1860s.

The works of the Brontës were not illustrated during their lifetimes and it was not until the twentieth century that visual interpretation of their work became a mainstay of popular editions. The illustrators of the Brontës' own time were unequal to the task of visualizing the texts and it was only in the modern period that artists, equipped with t...

A materialist reading of Oliphant's classic ghost which argues that the main character's seeing of a ghost is the product of 'adolescent insanity' - a term popularized at the time of publication by the writings of contemporary psychologists. The essay challenges readings of the story as a coded exploration of the frustrations of female authorship a...

An examination of the subversive roles of painters in texts by Reade, Collins and Braddon.

A critical examination of Agnes Miller Parker's visual interpretation of Hardy's characters and settings.

An analysis of the professional and working relationship between Charles Reade and his illustrator, Robert Barnes, in the production of the serialized novel, Put Yourself in His Place. The article explores Reade's attempts to impose his artistic vision on his illustrator, and the ways in which Barnes followed his instructions but added individual,...

An exploration of Collins's deployment of contemporary semiotics of landscape, flowers and plants, which he uses to articulate the idea of a personified wasteland - a rotten space of decaying vegetation and poisonous plants that symbolizes the moral iniquities of characters such as Percival Glyde and Lydia Gwilt.

An examination of Collins's deployment of the highly-codified 'language' of melodramatic gestures which was used on the stage to visualize emotional extremes and is used with parallel effect in the author's characterization. Reading the fictions as if they were literally stage-performances, the essay shows how Collins fuses the two forms and create...