Dickens (Charles)

Charles Dickens was the most widely read and most thoroughly illustrated English author of the nineteenth century, and the prints associated with him and his work form one of the richest bodies of literary illustration in the entire history of the printed image. From the serial illustrations of Phiz and Cruikshank that appeared alongside the original publication of the novels to the theatrical imagery generated by the countless stage adaptations that brought Dickens’s characters to life on the Victorian stage, the visual world of Dickens is extraordinarily rich and varied, and it rewards the collector who approaches it with both literary interest and an appreciation of the graphic arts.

The original serial illustrations to the Dickens novels — produced by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) for most of the major works and by George Cruikshank for the early novels — occupy a privileged position in the visual tradition associated with Dickens. These illustrations were not mere supplements to the text but integral components of the reading experience, published alongside the monthly or weekly instalments and shaping the visual imagination through which readers constructed the characters and scenes of the novels. The prints extracted from bound copies of the novels or the original monthly parts are the primary documents of this collaborative relationship between author and illustrator, and they are collected both for their intrinsic quality and for their connection to specific moments in the creation of works that have shaped English literary culture for more than a century and a half.

Portraits of Dickens himself are among the most widely circulated author portraits in the history of English literature. The novelist was painted by Daniel Maclise, William Powell Frith and other leading Victorian painters, and the engravings made from these portraits reached a mass audience through the illustrated press and the portrait print trade. Dickens was also an early and enthusiastic subject of photography, and the photographic portraits made in the later decades of his life were widely reproduced in engraved and photographic form. These portrait prints document the physical appearance and public presence of a figure who was simultaneously the most popular entertainer and the most morally serious literary voice of his age.

The theatrical adaptations of Dickens’s novels were among the most popular productions on the Victorian stage, and the theatrical portraits and scene illustrations associated with these productions constitute a distinct and substantial body of Dickens-related imagery. Major actors who created celebrated interpretations of Dickens characters — Bransby Williams as Scrooge, Beerbohm Tree and others in Dickens roles — were depicted in theatrical portraits that document both the performances themselves and the visual interpretation of specific characters that shaped subsequent generations’ understanding of the novels.

The annual commemoration of Christmas in Dickens’s work — above all in A Christmas Carol (1843), which did more than any other single text to establish the specific iconography of the English Christmas — generated enormous quantities of illustrated material from the 1840s onwards, and the prints associated with this Christmas tradition are among the most widely collected in the entire Dickens visual tradition. Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the other characters of the Carol are among the most recognisable figures in English popular culture, and original Victorian illustrations of these subjects are of considerable interest to collectors who value the connection between a well-loved literary text and its original visual interpretation.

For collectors of Victorian literature, theatrical history or the history of book illustration, antique Dickens prints offer material of exceptional cultural richness and consistent historical interest. The breadth of the associated visual tradition — spanning novel illustration, theatrical portraiture, author portraits, commemorative imagery and the full range of popular Dickens-related publishing — gives the field a depth that rewards extended exploration and serious collecting.