At the height of his fame as a caricaturist, Cruikshank was requested by John Macrone (1809-37), editor of The Monthly Magazine between January and August, 1834, to illustrate young Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz; in 1836, Cruikshank illustrated both the first and second series of the Sketches. In 1839, for Chapman and Hall's enlarged edition he redrew and enlarged all but one of his original illustrations, added thirteen new subjects, and provided the celebrated frontispiece for the Cheap Edition (this plate has served for seventeen years as the cover for Dickens Quarterly). After his work on Oliver Twist in Bentley's Miscellany from February, 1837, through April, 1839, Cruikshank did not illustrate other Dickens serials because publisher Richard Bentley had engaged him exclusively for Bentley's Miscellany from its founding in 1837. However, Cruikshank did illustrate Dickens's Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi (1838) and "The Lamplighter's Story" in the little-known but uproariously funny The Pic-Nic Papers (1841). Perhaps feeling a little guilty about obliging Cruikshank to discard Oliver and His Family (originally intended for Part 24 [April 1839] in Bentley's Miscellany, but replaced in the third of the Bentley volumes of November 1838), Dickens arranged for Chapman and Hall to commission Cruikshank to design a new monthly wrapper for the 1846 "re-serialisation" of the novel.

Although Dickens worked closely with George Cruikshank on the serial illustrations for Oliver Twist (1837-39), the novelist, who disliked the heavy teetotalism of the eight illustrations in The Bottle (1847) and of its sequel, The Drunkard's Children (1848), as well as the moralizing emendations of Cruikshank's fairytales, responded satirically in Household Words with his "Frauds on the Fairies," (1 October, 1853).

After Dickens's death in 1870, Cruikshank made the preposterous assertion that it was he who had originated Oliver Twist, a claim which Dickens's biographer and confidant, John Forster, refuted by referring the Dickens's letters, although the plates for that novel certainly reflect Cruikshank's extensive knowledge of the London underworld. Essentially a caricaturist, Cruikshank had difficulty in depicting Dickens's heroines as beauties; however, the dramatic power of Fagin in the Condemned Cell (Ch. 52) at the close of Oliver Twist is undoubted, as is the farcical comedy of Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney Taking Tea (Ch. 23). According to J. A. Hammerton,

George Cruikshank, who was born in London in 1792 and died in 1878, was famous as an etcher before the name of Boz had begun to rise above the literary horizon. Artists of repute, such as Cruikshank and Seymour, were unlike illustrators of a later day, who are summoned by the publisher when an author's MS. has been delivered, and instructed to supply so many illustrations, one for this chapter and one for that. It often happened that the reverse was the case, the artist's notion for a particular set of plates furnishing the author with a subject to "write up to." This never actually happened with Dickens. . . . — The Dickens Picture-Book, 2.

Related Materials

Works Consulted

Bentley, Nicolas; Michael Slater, Michael, and Nina Burgis, Nina. The Dickens Index Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Cruikshank, George. ""To Parents, Guardians, and all Persons Intrusted with the Care of Children" (1854). George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots." London: George Bell, 1865. Pp. 30-40.

Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1846.

Dickens, Charles. "Frauds on the Fairies." Household Words. A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. No. 184, Vol. VIII. Pp. 97-100. (Checked against the New York re-printing by McElrath & Barker, New York, Vol. VIII, No. 184, pages 197-100.)

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910.

"George Cruikshank." Aardvark.

Hammerton, J. A. The Dickens Picture-Book. Vol. 17 in The Charles Dickens Library. London: Educational Book Co., 1910.


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