Left: "She is quite exhausted." Left of centre: Vignetted Title-page. Right of centre: "Nelly was soon engaged in her task." Right: Mr. Swiveller rained down a shower of blows.

The Old Curiosity Shop (1900)

  1. Frontispiece, She is quite exhausted.
  2. The Wanderers in the Vignetted Title-Page
  3. "Now, my boys, fight away." (facing p. 48)
  4. Nelly was soon engaged in her task. (facing p. 161)
  5. "Will you go, sir?" (facing p. 192)
  6. Mrs. Jarley was at great pains to instruct her. (facing p. 321)
  7. Mr. Swiveller rained down a shower of blows (facing p. 352)
  8. They went off very fast. (Kit and his family's outing to Astley's) (facing p. 513)
  9. The Marchioness considered which to play. (Dick teaching the Small Servant cribbage) (facing p. 544)

Of the nine small-scale lithographs, four in some way involve Nell Trent and her grandfather, two involve the evil antagonist, Daniel Quilp, and three the Comic Man of the melodrama, Dick Swiveller. Two concern the secondary protagonist, Kit Nubbles, two Nell's grandfather, and two the Marchioness. The only significant actor missing is the Single Gentleman, but then this pocket-edition permitted Groome to illustrate only eight incidents (or nine, if one counts the vignette of The Wanderers in the illustrated title). Groome's eight lithographs contain a total of fifteen named characters in a novel that originally had nearly ten times that number of illustrations.

Groome's Edwardian illustrations reveal, despite their small dimensions (12.4 cm high by 8.0 cm wide, on pages measuring 15.2 cm by 9.5 cm - standard for the Collins' Clear-type Editions), a sure sense of composition. Groome prefers scenes between a limited number of characters, such as "Nelly was soon engaged in her task" in Ch. XVI (based on versions in both the original Master Humphrey's Clock and Household Edition illustrations), utilizing similar juxtapositions and contrasts, and often merely sketching in the background. Groome always puts his grouped characters in focus, and tends to throw the backdrop out of focus.

Other Principal Illustrated Editions of the Novel (1840-1910)

Copping's Interpretation of Dick Swiveller

Related Resources

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Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. , 1990.

Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888.

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

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. , 1990.

The Characters of Charles Dickens pourtrayed in a series of original watercolours by "Kyd." London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, n. d. [1910?].

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

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son> Illustrated by W. H. C. Groome. London and Glasgow, 1900, rpt. 1934. 2 vols. in one.

Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz, George Cattermole, Samuel Williams, and Daniel Maclise. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1841; rpt., Bradbury and Evans, 1849.

_______. The Old Curiosity Shop. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1863. 4 vols.

_______. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. 14 vols.

_______. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Thomas Worth. The Household Edition. New York: Haper & Bros., 1872.

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

_______. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by William H. C. Groome. The Collins' Clear-Type Edition. Glasgow & London: Collins, 1907.

_______. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Volume V.

Hammerton, J. A. "XIII. The Old Curiosity Shop." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. 170-211.

Kitton, Frederic George. "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne), a Memoir, Including a Selection From His Correspondence and Notes on His Principal Works. London, George Redway, 1882.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini. Character Sketches from Dickens. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924.

Schlicke, Paul, ed. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.

Steig, Michael. "Phiz's Marchioness." Dickens Studies. 2, 3: (September 1966): 141-46.

_______. Chapter 3. "From Caricature to Progress: Master Humphrey's Clock to Martin Chuzzlewit." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 53-85.

Stevens, Joan. "'Woodcuts Dropped into the Text': The Illustrations in The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge." Studies in Bibliography. 20 (1967): 113-34.

Tan, Jack. "Charles Dickens’s Idealized Portraits: Rewriting the child in Oliver Twist and The Old Curiosity Shop." The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children's Literature 18, 1 (September 2015).

Vann, J. Don. "The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock, 25 April 1840-6 February 1841." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. 64-65.


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Created 7 August 2020

Last modified 23 January 2021