"The Letter" — Phiz's twentieth illustration for Charles Lever's "Barrington" (November 1862)

The Letter

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

steel engraving

12.2 cm high by 9.9 cm wide (4 ¾ by 3 ⅞ inches), vignetted

November 1862

Twentieth serial illustration for Charles Lever's Barrington (Chapter 40, p. 337).

[Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image & text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Commentary

"Josephine hung down her head, and with her hands firmly clasped together, she sat for a few moments so motionless that she seemed scarcely to breathe" (337). The shamefaced confusion obvious from Josephine's posture and downcast gaze have been occasioned by Dinah's revealing that a letter containing a proposal has arrived. We are left to imagine Josephine's "trepidation and bewilderment" when she learns that the letter comes not from Conyers but from Stapylton. Note: Josephine's reference to her amusement at Major Dalgetty's behaviour in Scott's The Legend of Montrose points to the origin of such characters as Major M'Cormick and Dr. Dill in this novel and definitively dates the action at this point to the latter part of 338.

Related Material

Bibliography

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

Lever, Charles. Barrington. With 25 engravings by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 1863.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.

Sutherland, John A. "Barrington." The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford U. P., 1989, rpt. 1990, 48-49.

Created 10 August 2002

Last updated 17 September 2026