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Title-page vignette: Child-carollers
Charles Green
c. 1912
14.5 x 11 cm. inclusive of framed picture of the two carollers
Dickens's A Christmas Carol, The Pears' Centenary Edition, I, title-page vignette of holly and mistletoe.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
In the first edition of A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843), John Leech's frontispiece of the dancing Fezziwigs underscores the early Victorians' nostalgia for old customs and usages of Christmas as celebrated under the first four Georges, and rapidly receding under the spirit of modernity in the new industrial cities of Great Britain. Whereas the focus of illustrator A. E. Abbey in the American Household Edition is both the recalling to life and health of Tiny Tim and the supernatural nature of Scrooge's experiences, as signified by Marley's Ghost, facing the title-page, Charles Green divides his attention between the ghost story implicit in the frontispiece and the seasonal celebration signified by the angelic carol-singers in his title-page vignette, and the promise of spiritual and physical regeneration, as signified by the holly and mistletoe that frame the carollers.
Left: Leech's scene of the Fezziwigs' entertaining their employees in the urban warehouse, Mr. Fezziwig's Ball. Right: Barnard's title-page vignette for Christmas Books does not even concern A Christmas Carol, but focusses instead upon the then-popular Cricket on the Hearth, The title-page vignette.
Left: Sol Eytinge, Junior's scene of Bob trying to keep warm in the counting-house, In the Tank. Right: Fred Barnard's frontispiece showing Bob carrying Tim home from church, He had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant.
Above: Abbey's enshrining Cratchit family values in Bob's toasting his dour employer, "Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the feast!"
Left: Harry Furniss's "Scrooge objects to Christmas" (1910), featuring a vignette of Bob in the tank; right: Sol Eytinge, Junior's Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim (1867).
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books, illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books, illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVII.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VIII.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. (1843). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978.
_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. London: William Heinemann, 1915.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.
Created 6 May 2015
Last modified 29 February 2020