SOURCE: Coates, Christopher. “Thackeray's Editors and the Dual Text of Vanity Fair.” Word and Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 9, no. 1 (1993): 39-50.

In the following essay, Coates examines how the editorial decisions regarding the illustration of Vanity Fair affected the reader's interpretation of the novel.

One clause of the agreement between William Makepeace Thackeray and his publishers, William Bradbury and Frederick Mullett Evans, for the serial production of Vanity Fair stipulates that:

The said William Makepeace Thackerary undertakes to furnish by the 15th of every month sufficient matter for at least Two printed Sheets with two Etchings on Steel, and as many drawings on Wood as may be thought necessary—.¹

The last five words of that clause, arranged as they are in contractual passive voice, are vague indeed. On the one hand, for Bradbury and Evans, any drawings above and beyond the requisite two engravings did not...