One thing that stuck out to me in curating the various editions of Goblin Market was the dearth of paratextual info in earlier editions compared with editions from the mid-20th century onwards. I assume this reflects the material conditions of the Victorian period and early 20th century - either the technical or economic limitations preventing the inclusion of more comprehensive info regarding the date of publication, location of publication, etc. It made me wonder when exactly thorough paratext to open a book was commonplace in publishing.

Diachronic analysis enables the critic to focus on the physical material of the text instead of solely its body. In looking at the various editions of Goblin Market through the years, I found myself longing to hold the physical texts. There's an extra element of understanding in the materiality of an edition. I wanted to feel the binding, look at the paper quality and the ink used. Seeing the wear and aging on an individual book can often reveal the purpose and audience of the text. 

This week's reading was truly shocking because of The Goblin Market's versatility in both interpretation, and in audience. While reading the poem initially, I immediately noticed the sexual connotations of the poem especially with the help of Professor Kooistra's annotations. However, I assumed because the poem was so sensual and sexual in both description and illustrations (the ones I had seen from previous readings of the poem) I never thought this poem could be targetted towards a young audience.

By curating Carl Mueller’s front cover and back cover illustrations for Helen McCloy’s The Goblin Market (1943), I was able to learn more about the publishing company (Dell) and how publishing companies operated in the 1940s.  From my research, I was able to discover the rise of mass-marketing and pocket-sized novels.  Though I was not previously familiar with Dell Publishing Company, I knew of their competitor Pocket Books.  Looking at Helen McCloy’s rendition of The Goblin Market did not affect my interpretation of Ch

For this week's class we were tasked with the curation of a series of publications of Christina Rossetti’s classic poem “Goblin Market”. The process of curation was both incredibly interesting and uniquely challenging. Firstly, I like to point out that the experience of viewing all the first edition and primary source texts front the Ryerson Library was incredibly engaging. It was wonderful to see all those different versions of the text first hand and really illuminating to learn just how much the text had evolved overtime.

The focus of today's seminar was Christina Rossetti's infamous poem, 'Goblin Market' which chronicles two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, as they get entangled with the malicious and grotesque goblins that sell their forbidden fruit by the riverbank.

With this weeks activity of building a gallery to showcase the various editions of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, I learned a lot more about pictures themselves and their contexts, and further how their contexts influence the way that they represent a given text. For example, my group was asked to curate the illustrations of Laurence Housman, and through research I was able to discover that he made the original illustrations for the first published edition, meaning that they were less of a personal interpretation and more of a reflection of the text.

What interested me this week when exploring Goblin Market once again was the wide range of variations of the text. I specifically focused on the illustrations that were done by George Gershinwitz in "The Chlldren's Rossetti," Christina Rossetti and Illustration. I learned particularly in my edition that the themes were originally aimed for children, but due to their erotic themes they were then more marketed towards adults. This surprised me due to the common assumption that picture books would be produced for a younger demographic.

I enjoyed building the editions and renditions of “Goblin Market” in Cove. I was assigned to group four, in which we looked at “Goblin Market,” in the form of children’s books. I looked at Martin Ware’s rendition, in which I was very interested to see the how his images appeared to be very frightening and graphic. While using the secondary source, I was able to discover that he creates independently of the intended audience, therefore he did not create the images specifically for child consumption.