Exhibit:

A Mystery in Scarlet: Illustrations and Text, by Installment

James Malcolm Rymer's penny dreadful A Mystery in Scarlet was published in the London Miscellany (1866). It was the leading serial, or serial published on the front page of consecutive numbers. Each of the eighteen installments of A Mystery in Scarlet includes a header and three chapters. Seventeen of these installments (all but the ninth) begin with an illustration by the celebrated artist "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne) and are executed in the medium of wood engraving. The illustrations of the first and final installment (plates no. 1 and 18) derive from the unbound copies of those installments in the collection of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. All other illustrations derive from the bound copy of The London Miscellany, no. 1-18, in the collection of the same institution's Wells Library. All images are published here courtesy of the Lilly Library, where the photographs were created. Please click on any installment to view the illustration and read the corresponding text. 

Click here to return to the index page of this edition.