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The Engraved Title-page
Sol Eytinge, Jr., and A. V. S. Anthony
1867, rpt. 1875
Wood-engraving
14.5 x 9.8 cm
Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby (Diamond Edition), facing the frontispiece.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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If I were to attempt to sum up the thousands of letters, from all sorts of people in all sorts of latitudes and climates, which this unlucky paragraph brought down upon me, I should get into an arithmetical difficulty from which I could not easily extricate myself. Suffice it to say, that I believe the applications for loans, gifts, and offices of profit that I have been requested to forward to the originals of the BROTHERS CHEERYBLE (with whom I never interchanged any communication in my life) would have exhausted the combined patronage of all the Lord Chancellors since the accession of the House of Brunswick, and would have broken the Rest of the Bank of England.
There is only one other point, on which I would desire to offer a remark. If Nicholas be not always found to be blameless or agreeable, he is not always intended to appear so. He is a young man of an impetuous temper and of little or no experience; and I saw no reason why such a hero should be lifted out of nature. ["Preface," vi]
The reprinted Chapman and Hall ("Cheap") edition and both Household Editions (1875) conclude the "Preface" with a place and date: "Devonshire Terrace, May 1848." The other oddity is that the American editors have dropped a significant line about the Cheerbyle Brothers: "The Brothers are now dead." This note, suggesting that Dickens modelled the charitable twins from actual businessmen, appeared as a single paragraph immediately after "the Bank of England" in editions following the Cheap Edition of 1848.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.
_______. Nicholas Nickleby.Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr., and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. IV.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Ed. Andrew Lang. Illustrated by 'Phiz' (Hablot Knight Browne). The Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897. 2 vols.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 9.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 12: Nicholas Nickleby." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. 17, 147-170.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens andHis Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer,Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering,1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.
Lester Valerie Browne. Chapter 8., "Travels with Boz." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. 58-69.
Loomis, Rick. First American Editions of Charles Dickens: The Callinescu Collection, Part 1. Yarmouth, ME: Sumner & Stillman, 2010.
Schlicke, Paul, ed. The Oxford Reader'sCompanion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.
Steig, Michael. Chapter 2. "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 14-50.
Vann, J. Don. "Nicholas Nickleby." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 63.
Winter, William. "Charles Dickens" and "Sol Eytinge." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. Pp. 181-202, 317-319.
Last modified 20 April 2021