Frontispiece to the 1896 Hodder and Stoughton Reprint Depicting Ellen Among the Lilies
“Frontispiece to the 1896 Hodder and Stoughton Reprint Depicting Ellen Among the Lilies,” Wide, Wide World Digital Edition, accessed September 27, 2022, https://widewideworlddigitaledition.siue.edu/items/show/3403.
This illustration, appearing as the frontispiece to the 1896 Hodder and Stoughton reprint, depicts Ellen in a flower garden. The caption is a stanza from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1842 poem “Maidenhood.” There is a reference to page 511, the first page of Chapter XLVIII, during which Ellen and her Uncle Lindsay tour Edinburgh. In addition to being quoted in this caption, Longfellow’s stanza appears as an epigraph to the chapter referenced and to the novel as a whole. The image portrays Ellen within a lily patch, positioned in a demure stance with her head bowed, and emphasizes Ellen’s purity while reinforcing her connection to the divine. The gate in the background refers to Longfellow’s verse and to Biblical “gates of brass,” broken down by an Old Testament God (King James Version, Ps. 107.16 and Isa. 45.2).
Wetherell, Elizabeth [Susan Warner]. The Wide, Wide,World. Reprint, illus. Frederick Dielman. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1896.
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