illiam Cubitt Cooke (1866–1951), illustrator and watercolourist, was the son of Mordecai Cubitt Cooke, who was an English botanist and mycologist. W. Cubitt Cooke exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute, and the Royal Academy.
He is chiefly remembered for his work on J. M. Dent's 1892 edition of the Complete Novels of Jane Austen in ten volumes. He provided a total of thirty lithographs, three per volume, with the four longer Austen novels split into two volumes each. There was little that was novel in his approach to Austen; he tended, in fact, to choose exactly the same scenes for illustration as his predecessor, painter and illustrator Ferdinand Pickering (1811–circa 1882).
In the last decade of the nineteenth century he illustrated all of Charles Lever's novels, which were published in the United States by Little, Brown (Boston). In his short series, he responds to Phiz's earlier whimsical engravings for Chapman and Hall. — Philip V. Allingham
Works Illustrated:
Jane Austen's Persuasion (1894)
- Frontispiece: I am Sorry to find you Unwell. (Chapter 3)
- The Accident (Chapter 12)
- Wentworth's Letter (Chapter 23)
Charles Lever's A Day's Ride (1894)
- A Jealous Husband (Chapter XI)
- Tintefleck's entrée was quite dramatic (Chapter XXVII)
Charles Lever's That Boy of Norcott's (1904)
- I looked up and beheld that pale and gentle face (Frontispiece)
- I ordered a Splendid Wreath of Flowers to be brought, which I placed on her Brow (Chapter XII)
- Parting with Fräulein Sara (Chapter XXIV)
Bibliography
Austen, Jane. Persuasion. The Novels of Jane Austen in Ten Volumes. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. Illustrated by William Cubitt Cooke. London: J. M. Dent, & Co., 1894.
Lever, Charles. A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. To Which is Added That Boy of Norcott's. Illustrated by William Cubitt Cooke. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1904.
_____. That Boy of Norcott's. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32693/32693-h/32693-h.htm
Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell & Russell, 1939, rpt. 1969.
Created 20 June 2022
Last modified 31 August 2025