The Lady of Shalott by Charles Howard Johnson (dates unknown)

Miriam Neuringer

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Published in Tennyson's Complete Works (1891)

Half-tone process on paper

1/4 x 4 3/4 in. (18.5 x 12. cm.)

Signed with monogram in plate center left

Lent by the Alderman Library, University of Virginia.

Charles Howard Johnson's sparse style of illustration graces the pages of a late nineteenth-century American edition of Tennyson's poetry. Johnson's vignette depicts that moment when the Lady's "mirror crack'd from side to side." Johnson, an American illustrator about whom little is known, includes only the two essential narrative elements, the Lady and the mirror, both of which he represents with little decorative detail. Hence, his image contrasts greatly with that of Hunt's famous Moxon engraving of this subject.

References

Neuringer, Miriam. Ladies of Shalott: A Victorian Masterpiece and its Contexts, Ed. George P. Landow. Brown University: 1985. p. 126.

Tennyson, Alfred Lord. The Complete Works. 2 vols. New York: New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1891.

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Last modified 16 December 2006