"The Woman in White" by Fred Walker

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Frederick Walker —> Next]

The Woman in White

Frederick Walker

This poster was Dickens's way around the dictum that no article in his weekly journals Household Words and All the Year Round was to be signed. To keep Collins on staff, Dickens agreed that advertising designed for booksellers' windows could specifically ascribe authorship of his serialised novels to Wilkie Collins.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[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.]

The King of the Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins (London: Minerva, 1991) notes that Walker actually designed this poster for the Olympic's October 1871 production of Collins's dramatic adaptation of the novel, which starred the play's producer, George Vining, as Count Fosco, Mrs. Viner as Marian, Wybert Reeve as Walter Hartright, and Ada Dyas as both Laura and Anne Catherick:

A striking poster was designed for the play by Wilkie's friend Fred Walker, who had been one of the guests at the celebration dinner for The Woman in Whitein 1860. Walker was also a friend of Charley and Kate Collins, and the preliminary sketch was made at their house in Thurloe Place. It was the first time that a well-known artist had been commissioned to design a theatre poster: Wilkie was delighted with it. [p. 334]

William M. Clarke in The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins (London: W. H. Allen, 1989) adds that, later in life, Wybert Reeve played Count Fosco with great success on London and New York stages. The version of the play that Walker's poster advertised had a run of nineteen weeks and "a further extended run in the provinces" (p. 135).

Last modified March 15, 2002