[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Harry Furniss —> Our Mutual Friend —> Charles Dickens —> Next]
The Characters in the Story
Harry Furniss
1910
14.5 x 9 cm, vignetted
Engraved title-page for Our Mutual Friend, The Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing XV, frontispiece.
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
The sixty-eight named characters in the nineteen-month serial Our Mutual Friend, Dickens's last complete novel, are not in the main as immediately identifiable as those in Furniss's ornate title-pages for Dickens's earlier, picaresque novels. Yet several of the figures immediately stand out: the odd couple, roughly attired Rogue Riderhood and respectably garbed Bradley Headstone (centre, bottom); one-legged curmudgeon Silas Wegg (upper left); Lizzie Hexam holding an oar as she stands in her father's skull (upper right); Mr. Boffin and Bella Wilfer (lower left); Riah and Fascination Fledgeby (centre right); Jenny Wren, the dolls' dressmaker (upper right), and, looming large in the right-hand corner, Miss Abbey Potterson, reading her newspaper at the bar of The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. Eugene Wrayburn, Mortimer Lightwood, and the rest of the cast of characters, so readily distinguishable by their mannerisms and voices in Dickens's text, are not nearly so readily identifiable visually. Although so many primary and secondary characters occur in the text, only thirty-six named characters appear in the title-page vignettes, and many of them are simply too small to identify. Curiously, Furniss has not modelled his study of Miss Petterson upon one of his own full-page illustrations, but rather on Marcus Stone's serial illustration At the Bar (June 1864).
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Brigden, C. A. T. "No. 17. Silas Wegg." The Characters from Charles Dickens as depicted by Kyd. Rochester, Kent: John Hallewell, 1978.
The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].
Cordery, Gareth, and Joseph S. Meisel, eds. The Humours of Parliament: Harry Furniss's View of Late-Victorian Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2014. [Review by Françoise Baillet]
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone [40 composite wood-block engravings]. Volume 14 of the Authentic Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901 [based on the original nineteen-month serial and the two-volume edition of 1865].
_____. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and John Gilbert. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1872. Vol. 4.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. VIII.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume IX.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XV.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 21: The Other Novels." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. XVII. 441-442.
Vann, J. Don. "Our Mutual Friend, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, May 1864—November 1865." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 74.
Created 9 January 2020
Last modified 15 August 2025