"The Characters in the Story" — Furniss's engraved title-page for Dickens's "Reprinted Pieces" (1910)

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Reprinted Pieces

Harry Furniss

1910

14.3 x 9.7 cm vignetted

Dickens's Reprinted Pieces, Vol. 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing the frontispiece of The Begging-Letter Writer, anticipating the second selection in the journalistic selections, which Furniss and the edition's editor have inserted merely to fill out the volume containing Great Expectations from the same period. [Commentary continues below.]

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Commentary for Reprinted Pieces

Furniss complements his usual engraved title-page [whicxh he has not entitled Characters in the Story] with an image of the petitioner and his scribbling family. The engraved title's characters, however, are not specific to this part of volume 14, so that, for example one notices Micawber and young David Copperfield in the upper-right register, and the Dickenses' guide through the Catacombs and the one-legged Silas Wegg in the lower left. The elaboration of the principal characters in the 1910 Charles Dickens Library Edition, is just the second of the two "original plates" for this anthology, which editor J. A. Hammerton is deploying here merely to fill out the volume containing the shorter novel Great Expectations. The collection of characters and situations in miniature on this page has nothing to do with the twenty-eight reprinted pieces from Household Words and All the Year Round. Most of these "reprinted pieces" are relatively obscure examples of Dickens's journalism. The subject of the frontispiece, for example, is not noted at all in The Dickens Index; according to Paul Davis, it was published in Household Words on 18 May 1850.

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. , 1988.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations and Reprinted Pieces. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 14.

Last modified 2 December 2019