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.]
Bentley’s Miscellany (1837-1868) offered an assortment of serial fiction, short stories, historical writing, reviews (musical, culinary, and literary), and other snippets of information. Charles Dickens served as the journal’s inaugural editor, although he soon severed ties with its owner, Richard Bentley, whose interventionist approach to editing infuriated the up-and-coming novelist. This instalment of Dickens’s Oliver Twist features George Cruikshank’s famous illustration of Oliver asking for more. William Harrison Ainsworth succeeded Dickens as editor in 1839, and his serialized novel, Jack Sheppard, was even more successful than Dickens’s classic tale.
Looking suspiciously like Father Christmas, the Ghost of Christmas Present is Ebenezer Scrooge’s third visitor in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
[Scrooge's Third Visitor. An illustration by John Leech from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. ]
Did Dickens invent Christmas? No, but he certainly deserves credit for rejuvenating celebrations surrounding the day. Indeed, he is the one writer strongly identified with Christmas – and its spirit. Within a six year period he wrote five Christmas books: A Christmas Carol (1843); The Chimes (1844); The Cricket on the Hearth (1845); The Battle of Life (1846); and The Haunted Man (1848). Issued ten days before Christmas 1843, A Christmas Carol sold 6000 copies in one day. Nevertheless, and at least initially, it was a commercial failure. It was also the first and last time that Dickens used a colour title-page. The story of selfishness and transformation has become a modern classic of Christmas literature, and is quintessentially Victorian Dickens.
[Title page and frontispiece, illustrations by John Leech, from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.]
In 1858, Catherine and Charles Dickens legally separated. The scandal surrounding the event affected his relationship with Bradbury and Evans, who refused to publish his explanation of his separation in Punch. Annoyed, Dickens turned back to Chapman and Hall and began All The Year Round, a new weekly again priced at twopence. The first issue of 30 April 1859 carried his serialized novels A Tale of Two Cities (seen here) and Great Expectations. In later issues, works by Wilkie Collins, Bulwer Lytton, and Elizabeth Gaskell featured.
[Title page from Charles Dickens's All the Year Round, Volume 1, from April 30 to October 22 1859. Numbers 1 to 26.]
All the Year Round (1859-1895) was founded by Dickens in response to a quarrel with his publishers, Bradbury & Evans. The new journal was strikingly similar to its predecessor, Household Words. Each issue began with an instalment of a novel, with Dickens effectively self-publishing both A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, since he was both owner and editor of the publication. Authors of serials were now identified by name. Sales were typically around 100,000 copies per week, and contributors included Edward Bulwer Lytton, Frances Trollope, and Edmund Yates.
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.]
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.
[Title page and frontispiece illustration by Arthur A. Dixon from Charles Dickens's American Notes.]
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.
[Page 190-191 from Charles Dickens's American Notes and Pictures from Italy.]
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.
[Title page and frontispiece from Charles Dickens's American Notes and Pictures from Italy.]
In 1850, the Times began publishing articles exposing the Court of Chancery, and the quagmire-like delays and proceedings inherent in the legal system. Here was Dickens’s opportunity. In Bleak House, his ninth novel, he attacked the abuses in the Courts, and continued his portrayal of London slums. Again ‘Phiz’ (Dickens’s ‘cher Brune’) illustrated the novel, which among others featured Esther Summerson, Mrs Jellyby, Krook (who dies by spontaneous combustion), Jo, and Sir Leicester Dedlock. The first instalment of 25,000 copies sold out and had to be reprinted; Dickens himself wrote: ‘It is an enormous success’. On display is the first printing of the first book edition, which sold for one guinea (£1 1s).
[Title page and frontispiece with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne from Charles Dickens's Bleak House. 1st book edition, 1st printing. ]
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.]
Dickens must have been well satisfied with reader responses to Dombey and Son, which he began in Lausanne, continued in Paris, and finished in Brighton, Broadstairs and London. The first number sold 30,000, an increase over Martin Chuzzlewhit, but below sales of Nicholas Nickleby. He netted £2200 for the first six months, including his £100 per month payment from the publishers. According to the reckoning of his friend Forster, he had finally achieved financial security. Like Martin Chuzzlewhit, the book had a tight planned structure; unlike Chuzzlewhit, it dealt with the theme of pride.
[Title page and frontispiece (by Phiz) from Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son.]
Dickens’s George Silverman’s Explanation, a story in nine chapters, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly between January and March 1868, when Dickens was in America on a reading tour. This dark tale was one of the last pieces of fiction written by him. It carries a very bleak message: ‘the lesson that good produces evil, that virtue goes unrewarded, that hypocrisy goes undetected, and that we are all helpless prisoners of our environment and our personality’ (Harry Stone). Even Dickens was struck by it: ‘Upon myself, it has made the strongest impression of reality and originality!! And I feel as if I had read something (by somebody else) which I should never get out of my head!!’
[Title page of Charles Dickens's George Silverman's Explanation; edited by Harry Stone; illustrated by Irving Block]
Dickens’s George Silverman’s Explanation, a story in nine chapters, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly between January and March 1868, when Dickens was in America on a reading tour. This dark tale was one of the last pieces of fiction written by him. It carries a very bleak message: ‘the lesson that good produces evil, that virtue goes unrewarded, that hypocrisy goes undetected, and that we are all helpless prisoners of our environment and our personality’ (Harry Stone). Even Dickens was struck by it: ‘Upon myself, it has made the strongest impression of reality and originality!! And I feel as if I had read something (by somebody else) which I should never get out of my head!!’
[Page 3 featuring the Third Chapter of Charles Dickens's George Silverman's Explanation. ]
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. ]
‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root everything else.’ So begins Dickens’s Hard Times (1854), a work with its subtitle: For These Times. With his satiric swipe at industrialism, James Mill’s Utilitarianism, and the national obsession with the ‘science’ of Political Economy (measuring everything by facts, figures, and averages), Dickens confirmed to his friend Carlyle, to whom the work was dedicated: ‘I know it contains nothing in which you do not think with me.’ There were no illustrations to Hard Times, Dickens’s shortest novel.
[Page 4 and 5 of Charles Dickens's Hard Times. For These Times.]
The first number of Dickens’s periodical Household Words appeared on Saturday, 30 March 1850. This much-vaunted ‘comrade and friend of many thousands of people’ was the joint property of Dickens (one-half), publishers Bradbury and Evans (one-fourth), W. H. Hills, and John Forster (one-eighth each), and cost two pence per issue. Many of the 3000 articles were unsigned, and designed, as stated in ‘A Preliminary Word’, ‘to show to all, that in all familiar things, even in those which are repellent on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out.’ Flagging sales saw Dickens serialize Hard Times within its pages. He discontinued his ‘conducting’ of this weekly on 28 May 1859, incorporating it into All The Year Round.
[Heading of Charles Dickens's Household Words, Volume 1, page 1 dated Saturday March 30, 1850.]
Household Words (1850-1859) was ‘conducted’ and founded by Charles Dickens in collaboration with his publishers, Bradbury & Evans. The publication featured articles dealing with social reform, emigration, and the British Empire, alongside novels in serial form. Works by Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Reade, and Dickens’s own Hard Times appeared over the years. Sales sat at around 40,000 copies per week (it was priced at tuppence per issue), although readership could triple for special holiday editions, and this figure does not account for the many working readers who would band together to buy a shared copy. All articles were published anonymously, yet the identities of featured novelists tended to be an open secret.
Hablot Browne’s cartoon on the top of the first part of Little Dorrit depicts a procession of decrepit, fool-like individuals, including a dozing Britannia. The image matches Dickens’s satiric attack in the book on the ruling class and their ineptitude. His famed Circumlocution Office highlights well civil service bureaucracy and incompetence. His strong feelings against imprisonment for debt also allowed use of the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison, where ‘heroine’ Amy Dorrit was born, and her delusional father William is the longest serving inmate. Arthur Clennam, a guilt-ridden ‘anti-hero’, is determined to rescue Amy from her plight. Originally titled Nobody’s Fault, Little Dorrit was the last of Dickens’s novels issued by Bradbury and Evans. Note Amy’s ‘sunny’ appearance on the title-page.
[Cover of the first part of Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit, December 1855. ]
Hablot Browne’s cartoon on the top of the first part of Little Dorrit depicts a procession of decrepit, fool-like individuals, including a dozing Britannia. The image matches Dickens’s satiric attack in the book on the ruling class and their ineptitude. His famed Circumlocution Office highlights well civil service bureaucracy and incompetence. His strong feelings against imprisonment for debt also allowed use of the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison, where ‘heroine’ Amy Dorrit was born, and her delusional father William is the longest serving inmate. Arthur Clennam, a guilt-ridden ‘anti-hero’, is determined to rescue Amy from her plight. Originally titled Nobody’s Fault, Little Dorrit was the last of Dickens’s novels issued by Bradbury and Evans. Note Amy’s ‘sunny’ appearance on the title-page.
[Title page and frontispiece with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne from Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit. 1st book edition.]
George Cruikshank illustrated Dickens’s Oliver Twist. In this plate, Oliver Twist has just been shot by Mr Giles, the butler, in the bungled burglary of the Maylie home. Mr Brittles stands beside Mr Giles and Bill Sikes looks on through the window.
[The Burglary by George Cruikshank, frontispiece from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist; or the Parish Boy’s Progress. ]
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.]