For this reading, I
read from Bleak House Volume IX,
chapter twenty-six. The chapter was entitled, Sharpshooters. This small, delicate book is light blue with an
array of illustrations on the front and cover. When I opened the book to its
rough, textured, yellow pages, I immediately noticed that the chapter did not
begin right away. There were several pages of advertisements for various goods
and services that were being sold during the time of Charles Dickens and when
these installments were being released for the public to read. One example of
an advertisement was Rodger’s Improved
Shirts. In the advertisement, the business was promoting and selling their
shirts, saying they are the “highest degree of excellent at the lowest cost” (Bleak House Volume IX Page 5). I found
this advertisement interesting because of my blog entry about fashion and that
clothing was being promoted in a story like Bleak
House.
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| Front Cover |
This
specific piece from the bundle only had one illustration and it was also in the
front right before the chapter actually began. There was a small, thin piece of
paper between the page with the illustration and the words so that the ink
would not smear and ruin either the picture or the writing. After the chapter
concluded, there was more to come. There were other advertisements and reviews
of products that the people would have read after Dickens’ chapter of Bleak House. The back cover left the
readers with a final advertisement to see and absorb.
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| Back Cover |
All of these findings are very important and matter
greatly in the reading of Bleak House.
The advertisements showed that reading, writing, and the production of
literature in the Victorian period went beyond the simple publishing of a
story. There was much more to it, such as the advertisements; they displayed an
economical role in the releasing of the Bleak
House installments to the public. The people could read their stories but,
also look into doing some shopping as well. In today’s modern times, there are
not advertisements in books for products in the market. When reading the story
in the Oxford version, it looks just like any other long novel. The arrangement
of pages follows the same format as most books published today starting with
publication information, title page, table of contexts, etc. In the blue books
however, that is not how they arranged and is not how the Victorians
experienced reading Bleak House.
Reading from the small, fragile book furthered the experience of reading this
story in context. Looking at the same words, images, advertisements, and
reading from the same pages as the Victorians did allowed me to better
understand what it was like when the people received Bleak House in installments and did not have the story readily
available to them at one time.
Although
the actually font of the print in the chapter is simple, it has an older look
to it. The Oxford version’s font of the printed text is a modern font from a
computer. The difference in fonts helps to separate Dickens’ work from a modern
version of his story in terms of the simple appearance of the words. Since the
readers of the Victorian Era did not receive the entire story at one time, they
were not overwhelmed by a three-hundred page novel. Instead, the small
installments kept the readers intrigued and ready to find out what happens
next. With a huge Oxford novel like Bleak
House, the entire story is right there for readers and the elements of
surprise and plots twists are not delayed but readily available. All of these
findings and realizations show that the form in which Bleak House is read has a huge impact on the content of the actual
story. The form is very important and as it can be seen, can alter the way
people read Bleak House and what they
gain from the experience.
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