The magazine effect: reading Huckleberry Finn, Dorian Gray and The Return of Sherlock Holmes in the periodicals in which they first appeared

© 2016 Dr. Thomas VrankenAs the nineteenth century transitioned into the twentieth, the dominant literary technology on both sides of the Atlantic was not the stand-alone novel but the periodical magazine. Building on Walter Dill Scott’s contemporaneous idea of ‘fusion’, this thesis seeks to resurrect the total experience of reading three now canonical works – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884-5), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903-5) – in the periodicals in which they first appeared. Ultimately, I argue, reading these otherwise familiar works alongside the ephemeral magazine material that accompanied them allows us to see the works in a new light