Dickens's "Little Nell and Her Grandfather," Frontispiece by Harold Copping (1893)

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Little Nell and Her Grandfather (Frontispiece)

Harold Copping

1893

Photographic reproduction of line drawing

13 x 10.4 cm (5 by 4 inches), vignetted

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Here the illustrator of the more sentimental aspects of Dickens's child characters depicts the Victorian reading public's enduring favourite, the resourceful and resilient Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop, serialised in Master Humphrey's Clock (1840-41). [Commentary continued below.]

Scanned image, caption, and commentary below by Philip V. Allingham

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Passage Illustrated: Nell and her Grandfather take to the road to Escape Quilp

They journeyed on, when the time came that they must wander forth again, by pleasant country lanes; and as they passed, watching the birds that perched and twittered in the branches overhead, or listening to the songs that broke the happy silence, their hearts were tranquil and serene. But bye-and-bye they came to a long winding road which lengthened out far into the distance, and though they still kept on, it was at a much slower pace, for they were now very weary and fatigued. [Mary Angela Dickens et al., "Little Nell and Her Grandfather," 138]

Commentary: The Enduring Popularity of Little Nell Trent

Harold Copping prefaced the 1893 children's book with three line drawings: this version of the wayfarers from the weekly instalments of Master Humphrey's Clock (25 April 1840 through 6 February 1841), with original woodblock illustrations by The Clockworks Team of George Cattermole, Phiz, engraver Samuel Williams, and Daniel Maclise; Meg and Lilian from The Chimes; and a headpiece for the "Contents" page (5), Little Nell. "There are good reasons," remarks Percy Fitzgerald in "Dickens' Dream Children, the book's introductory chapter, "for the affectionate hold which Little Nell and Little Dombey have always had upon the reader" (9). The critic alludes obliquely here to the death of Mary Scott Hogarth (1820-37), Dickens's young sister-in-law, as having been the biographical inspiration for the fictional death of Little Nell Trent: "the story of his affectionate regard for the sweet girl whose illness and death actually ran near to wrecking 'Pickwick,' and stopped its course for a time. This shows how acutely he felt her loss" (9).

Various Artists' Illustrations for Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop (1841-1924)

The Old Curiosity Shop Illustrated: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works."
George Cattermole (13 plates selected)
Hablot Knight Browne (61 wood-engravings)
Felix O. C. Darley (4 photogravure plates)
Sol Eytinge, Jr. (12 wood engravings)
Thomas Worth (54 wood engravings)
Charles Green (39 wood engravings)
W. H. C. Groome (8 lithographs plus engraved title)
J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") (13 lithographs from watercolours)
Harry Furniss (31 lithographs plus engraved title)

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman and Hall, 1841. Rpt., 1849 by Bradbury and Evans (3 vols. in 2).

_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Thomas Worth. The Household Edition. New York: Harper & Bros., 1872. I.

_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.

Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University.

Created 25 September 2023