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The writing of Nicholas Nickleby overlapped the serialization of Oliver Twist, and the editing of Memoirs of Grimaldi. Nicholas Nickleby, this ‘hero as a young man’ novel, was also serialized, starting in April 1838 and ending October 1839. Again some real-life people became part of the novel’s theatrics: Squeers, based on William Shaw, a bung-eyed school proprietor who had been sued in court for mistreating his charges; and garrulous Mrs Nickleby, based on Dickens’s own mother. Dickens must have been pleased with sales; the first number sold 48,000. This Dickens-like Nickleby (beside Miss Squeers) was executed by illustrator Frederick Barnard for the ‘Household Edition’, the first edition to be published after Dickens’s death in 1870.

[Oh! As soft as possible, if you please. Illustration by Frederick Barnard from page 53 of Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Household Edition.]

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]]> The heavy writing schedule that Dickens faced during the creation of Oliver Twist necessitated textual alterations to later printings. The most noticeable was the toning down of anti-Semitic references, especially to the character Fagin, based on the real-life criminal Ikey Solomon. Dickens had referred to Fagin as the ‘merry old gentleman’ or simply the ‘Jew’; in later editions, the mention of ‘Jew’ is much reduced. Oliver Twist is famous for revealing Dickens’s traumatic experience in the Blacking Factory. It not only contains unforgettable characters such as Mr Bumble, the Artful Dodger, Sikes and Nancy, but also his satirical swipes at the workhouse system, and the legal system that administered it. Here Cruikshank’s Fagin awaits his fate.

[Fagin in the condemned Cell. Illustration by George Cruikshank facing page 216 in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. 1st edition, 3rd issue.]

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While submitting contributions to the Monthly Magazine, Dickens formed his pen-name – ‘Boz’. He juggled parliamentary reporting (he was adept at shorthand) with creative writing, submitting additional ‘sketches’ to the Evening Chronicle, edited by his future father-in-law George Hogarth. Dickens was an excellent observer, and his Sketches by Boz include memorable descriptions of people and places, especially of London. ‘Thoughts about People’ is but one, ably illustrated by George Cruikshank, the ‘modern Hogarth’, who was equally secretive about his personal life (unbeknown to all, he had a mistress by whom he fathered 11 illegitimate children).

[Thoughts about People. Illustration by George Cruikshank, opposite page 90 from Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People.]

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In early March 1836, Dickens signed a contract with the fledging firm of Chapman and Hall, who gambled on serial publication of Pickwick Papers, Dickens’s first novel. He was to receive £14 for each 12,000-word instalment. Only 1,000 of the first number were printed; by late November 1837, 40,000 copies were being sold. The appearance of Sam Weller clinched Dickens’s reputation, and Pickwick Papers was a runaway bestseller. This first book edition of the twenty instalments contains illustrations by Robert Seymour, who completed them up to the second number; R. W. Buss, who was an interim illustrator; and then 20 year old Hablot Browne, who would become Dickens’s most consistent artistic collaborator.

[Title page of Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. 1st bound edition.]

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In December 1833 Dickens’s first published literary work appeared in the Monthly Magazine; it was entitled ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’ (later called ‘Mr Minns and his Cousin’). His first book was Sketches by Boz, and it contained sketches and tales written during 1833 and 1836, including the above ‘Mr Minns’. On display is the Second Series edition, which contained stories not in the First Series of February 1836. Published by John Macrone, the two volume set was illustrated by George Cruikshank, who, along with Dickens, is depicted as a flag waver in this engraved title page. In 1834, Dickens was 22 and a little known Parliamentary reporter; by 1837 he was famous. Sketches by Boz, well-received on publication, did much to establish his reputation.

[Vauxhall Gardens by Day (left) and Sketches by Boz- Second Series (right). Illustrated frontispiece and title page by George Cruikshank, from Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. Second Series.]

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William Makepeace Thackeray was not only a major Victorian writer who created works such as Vanity Fair, but he was also an accomplished artist. Indeed, after the suicide of Robert Seymour, Dickens’s first illustrator, Thackeray applied to illustrate Pickwick Papers. He was unsuccessful in this. Initially good friends, Dickens and he had a falling out: the so-called Garrick Club Affair of 1858, which was started by one Edmund Yates. Fortunately, there was reconciliation before Thackeray’s death in December 1863. On display are Dickens’s eulogy of Thackeray in The Cornhill Magazine, and the first serial instalment of Thackeray’s London novel The History of Pendennis.

[Page 129 from The Cornhill Magazine, Volume IX, February, 1864. In Memoriam by Charles Dickens.]

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Barnaby Rudge, Dickens’s fifth novel, centred round the Gordon ‘No Popery’ Riots of 1780 and the murder of Reuben Haredale. Originally planned to be his first novel and entitled Gabriel Varden, the Locksmith of London, it was put aside because of the success of Pickwick. An historical novel in the tradition of Sir Walter Scott, Barnaby Rudge first appeared in serial form in Master Humphrey’s Clock from February to November 1841. Maria Beadnell, Dickens’s first love, was the original of the flirtatious Dolly Varden.

[Chapter the First from Charles Dickens's ‘Barnaby Rudge’, in Master Humphrey’s Clock. 1st edition. Vol. II.]

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]]> Charles Dickens was the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth Dickens, née Barrow. Financial mismanagement resulted in John being imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison. One consequence of this was that the twelve-year old Dickens was taken out of school and made to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he spent ten hours a day, Monday through Saturday, pasting labels onto pots of blacking. This experience haunted Dickens for years, and many of his novels like Dombey and Son and David Copperfield reflect his concern for destitute children, orphans and abandonment. Here he is in happier times, with a portrait painted by E. Lawn, circa 1870. The usual flourish that ended most of Dickens’s letters is depicted opposite.

[Letter written by Charles Dickens in Charles Dickens Papers 1845-1881.]

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By February 1838, Charles Dickens had begun Nicholas Nickleby, his third novel. Published serially between April 1838 and October 1839, he was paid £150 per number, with a bonus offered of £1500 on completion. The soon-to-be-more-famous Hablot Knight Browne (‘Phiz’) illustrated the novel. There was fieldwork involved. In 1838, both men travelled to Yorkshire to look at schools; Dotheboys Hall was the reconstituted literary result. This first book edition also contains Daniel Maclise’s engraved portrait of Dickens as well as coloured plates by ‘Peter Palette’, a pseudonym for Thomas Onwhyn, a later Punch illustrator.

[The internal economy of Dotheboys Hall. An illustration by Hablot Knight Browne in Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]

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]]> Mr Squeers by Thomas Onwhyn from Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby]]> Charles Dickens]]> ]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, shows Wackford Squeers admonishing one of his unfortunate charges.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]> The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]]> Charles Dickens]]>

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Great Expectations first appeared in 36-weekly parts in Dickens’s All The Year Round (1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861) and was not illustrated. However, the earlier and almost parallel first American printing was. Appearing in Harper’s Weekly (24 November 1860 to 3 August 1861) their Great Expectations carried 40 illustrations by John McLenan, the so-called ‘American Phiz’. Another point of difference was that the first American book edition (1861) carried Dickens’s pen-name ‘Boz’, which he had stopped using in 1844. Like the earlier David Copperfield, Great Expectations is strongly autobiographical, and mirrors many aspects of Dickens’s life. The ‘led/lead’ reference on display is just one bibliographical difference that helps distinguish between first, second, and later printings.

[Page 150 and 151 from Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, 1st edition, Volume III, Chapter X. ]

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The death of his mother; the death of Thackeray; the finishing of Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings and The Uncommercial Traveller, and house hunting (57 Gloucester Place), were events that occurred around the time Dickens was writing Our Mutual Friend, his fourteenth and last completed novel. It was a difficult book to write. The Staplehurst rail crash of 9 June 1865 did not help. While ministering to the injured in this tragedy, Dickens managed to clamber back on the train and rescue the manuscript of Our Mutual Friend. He was not injured, but he did feel ‘quite shattered and broken up’. Our Mutual Friend was published in parts, the first selling 35,000 copies. There was a major difference to this work about greed: the illustrations were by Marcus Stone, rather than by ‘Phiz’. This is the first book edition.

[Frontispiece illustration by Marcus Stone and title page from Volume II of Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.]

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]]> Great Expectations first appeared in 36-weekly parts in Dickens’s All The Year Round (1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861) and was not illustrated. However, the earlier and almost parallel first American printing was. Appearing in Harper’s Weekly (24 November 1860 to 3 August 1861) their Great Expectations carried 40 illustrations by John McLenan, the so-called ‘American Phiz’. Another point of difference was that the first American book edition (1861) carried Dickens’s pen-name ‘Boz’, which he had stopped using in 1844. Like the earlier David Copperfield, Great Expectations is strongly autobiographical, and mirrors many aspects of Dickens’s life. The ‘led/lead’ reference on display is just one bibliographical difference that helps distinguish between first, second, and later printings.]]> Charles Dickens]]>


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Pictures from Italy describes the travels in the ‘good old shabby devil of a coach’ through France, and then to Genoa via Marseilles. While residing in an Albaro villa, and then ‘Palazzo Peschiere’, he also visited Venice, Naples, Rome (the Colosseum: ‘most stupendous and awful’), Pisa, and Pompeii, where he climbed Mt. Vesuvius and looked ‘into the flaming bowels of the mountain’. Conscious of charges of anti-Catholicism, he reminded readers that Pictures from Italy was ‘a series of faint reflections – mere shadows in the water.’ Here are the first Bradbury and first Tauchnitz editions of 1846.]]> Charles Dickens]]>



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Pictures from Italy describes the travels in the ‘good old shabby devil of a coach’ through France, and then to Genoa via Marseilles. While residing in an Albaro villa, and then ‘Palazzo Peschiere’, he also visited Venice, Naples, Rome (the Colosseum: ‘most stupendous and awful’), Pisa, and Pompeii, where he climbed Mt. Vesuvius and looked ‘into the flaming bowels of the mountain’. Conscious of charges of anti-Catholicism, he reminded readers that Pictures from Italy was ‘a series of faint reflections – mere shadows in the water.’ Here are the first Bradbury and first Tauchnitz editions of 1846.]]> Charles Dickens ]]>



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For one year, from July 1844 to July 1845, Dickens and his family lived in Genoa. Based on letters to his friend Forster, Pictures from Italy describes the travels in the ‘good old shabby devil of a coach’ through France, and then to Genoa via Marseilles. While residing in an Albaro villa, and then ‘Palazzo Peschiere’, he also visited Venice, Naples, Rome (the Colosseum: ‘most stupendous and awful’), Pisa, and Pompeii, where he climbed Mt. Vesuvius and looked ‘into the flaming bowels of the mountain’. Conscious of charges of anti-Catholicism, he reminded readers that Pictures from Italy was ‘a series of faint reflections – mere shadows in the water.’ Here are the first Bradbury and first Tauchnitz editions of 1846.

 

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Dickens made two trips to America; the first between January and June 1842, and the second between November 1867 and April 1868. American Notes, a mix of sketches and travelogue, was the outcome of his first visit. Not gun-shy, Dickens made disparaging comments on their corrupt political system, slavery, their press, and even the habit of spitting in public. His advocacy for an international copyright agreement between Britain and the United States which would prevent the pirating of books further outraged some American readers. Despite adverse reviews, American Notes is an amusing read, especially with the dialogues concocted of people he met along the way. They are crafted in his own inimitable style.

[Illustration by Arthur A. Dixon opposite page 80 from Charles Dickens's American Notes.]

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