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John Austen (who was born in Kent in 1886, came up to London he was twenty, and died in 1948) illustrated the Heritage Edition (1937) in a markedly modernist style, particularly in his five "Color Plates," each 6.75 inches high by 4.3 inches wide, and taking up an entire facing page: "David and Dora" (frontispiece), "Ham" (opposite p. 38), "Mr. Micawber" (opposite p. 150), "Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick" (opposite p. 182), "Uriah Heep" (opposite p. 214), "Dora" (opposite p. 374), "Agnes and Mr. Wickfield" (opposite p. 534), and "Mr. Peggotty Finds Little Em'ly" (opposite p. 678). His initial vignette for chapter 3 (page 34 in that edition) shows clearly that Austen developed his conception of the Peggottys' boathouse directly from the textual description of it, and chose to contradict the version developed by Phiz for the 1849-50 serialisation. Austen felt that the key aspects of the illustration should echo that by Phiz for the frontispiece (Em'ly as a child, the sand dunes, and the effect of the wind), but that his depiction of the boathouse itself should be consistent with the text and Fred Barnard's full-page illustration for that same chapter. Austen executed a total of sixty-four such "character" vignettes, one for each chapter, ending with little Agnes bringing Dan'l Peggotty into the Copperfield drawing-room in ch. 63 and a portrait of Agnes for ch. 64, the original chapter vignettes each being approximately 3 inches high by 2 inches wide.

References

Dickens, Charles. The Personal History of David Copperfield. Il. John Austen. New York: The Heritage Press, 1937.

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Last modified 11 March 2010