"I made bold to say 'I am glad you enjoy it'."
H. M. Brock
Wood engraving
1901-3
13.8 cm high by 9.4 cm wide (5 ⅜ by 3 ¾ inches), framed
Initial regular illustration for Dickens's Great Expectations, facing p. 12.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Passage Illustrated: Pip delivers the Vittles to the Starving Convict
Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”
“Did you speak?”
“I said, I was glad you enjoyed it.”
“Thankee, my boy. I do.”
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating, and the man’s. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody’s coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog. [Chapter III, p. 13]
Commentary: Pip's Incongruous Costuming
The shadowy cannon behind Magwitch establishes the scene as the old shore battery in the mists of the Kentish marches. The image of the ravenous, raggedly dressed escaped convict is perfectly consistent with Pip's first-person narrative. A jarring detail, however, is the upper-middle-class clothing in which the boy-narrator appears; this seems far too stylish and rather too contemporary for a child from a lower-middle-class home far removed from the capital. Moreover, this Pip is only mildly curious, and hardly terrified by the animalistic felon. Dickens's other illustrators have not made this satorial error, which is especially prominent in coloured frontispiece for this volume.
Pertinent Illustrations in Other Editions: 1860, 1867, 1876, 1885, and 1903
Upper left: John McLenan's "You young dog!" said the man, licking his lips at me, "What fat cheeks you ha' got!" — second illustration for "Great Expectations" for 24 November 1860; upper right, Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s "Pip and The Convict". Lower left: F. A. Fraser's "And you know what wittles is?" Lower centre: Harry Furniss's impressionistic Pip's Struggle with the Escaped Convict (1910). Lower right: H. M. Brock's "I made bold to say 'I am glad you enjoy it'". [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Other Artists’ Illustrations for Dickens's Great Expectations
- A Comparison of Fraser's Illustrations in the original 1870s Household Edition plates and those in the Collier New York edition of 1900
- J. Clayton Clarke or "Kyd"
(2 coloured lithographs) - Felix O. C. Darley (2 plates)
- A. A. Dixon (8 lithographs)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (8 wood-engravings)
- F. A. Fraser (30 wood-engravings)
- Harry Furniss (28 plates)
- Charles Green (10 lithographs)
- Frederic W. Pailthorpe (21 lithographs)
- John McLenan (40 plates)
- Marcus Stone (8 plates)
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Illustrated by H. M. Brock. Imperial Edition. 16 vols. London: Gresham Publishing Company [34 Southampton Street, The Strand, London], 1901-3.
Created 19 January 2002 Last updated 29 April 2026