George Blake’s Letter

Winslow Homer

1870

Wood engraving by an unknown engraver

6½ x 4½ inches

The Galaxy, IX (Junuary1870): frontispiece.

This is an illustration for the final instalment of Annie Edwards’s ‘Susan Fielding.’ The heart-broken women, let down by a letter, is a familiar trope in Victorian fiction, and Homer draws on the many examples of this visual type in book illustration of ‘The Sixties.’

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke. [Click on image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]