So... is it just me, or are you all kind of rooting for bad things to happen to Victor now? Am I a bad person for feeling this, or is Victor just sort of insufferable? Maybe a little of Column A, a little of Column B? All right then.
Today's cover focuses on Victor, walking in the Alps, just as he first meets the monster whose shadow looms over his shoulder:
This 2007 edition is from Sterling Publishing's Unabridged Classics series, all of which have covers by Scott McKowen. McKowen works in a scratchboard style, which is nicely evocative of old-school woodcuts and such. He's best known for his work illustrating theatrical posters, many of which can be seen here along with much of his other work, and is also well-known in geek circles for illustrating the covers to Marvel Comics' 1602, by Neil Gaiman.
Notes after the jump!
16:11 - "The season of assizes approaches." The court of assizes were judges who traveled circuits through the country, periodically hearing criminal and civil cases that were too large to be handled by the local magistrates' courts. The Irish assizes specifically started with a local magistrate or justice of the peace deciding if the evidence merited a trial, then referring the bill of indictment to a Grand Jury who would decide if the bill was correct and did indeed deserve a trial, at which point the defendant would be indicted and sent to trial proper. In Victor's case, the grand jury decided the evidence of him still being in the Orkneys at the time of the murder was strong enough for him not to need a trial.
The assizes were abolished in the Irish Free State (the independent precursor to the current Republic of Ireland) in 1924, and in Northern Ireland in 1978.
18:00 - "maladie du pays." Victor inexplicably slips back into French (which is his native language, in case you forgot) with this phrase, which literally means "illness of the country," and which is an old-fashioned French idiom meaning "homesickness."
20:33 - "laudanum." Laudanum is an alcoholic solution or "tincture" of opium, usually prescribed as a pain-reliever or a cough suppressant but used for a variety of other ailments as well. It contained pretty much all of the active ingredients in opium, including a pretty high concentration of morphine. As with all opiates, it's highly addictive.
21:12 - "port of Holyhead." Holyhead is a Welsh town on Holy Island, itself part of the county of Anglesey. It's a major port on the Irish Sea, with numerous ferry lines going back and forth to Ireland. If it sounds familiar to you, and you're a Harry Potter fan, it may be because of the all-lady Quidditch team the Holyhead Harpies, which was Ginny Weasley's favorite team and for whom she played as Chaser after the events of the novels.
If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!
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