"The Boys fleeing Fagin's Hideout," from the wrapper for the 1846 serialisation of "Oliver Twist" by George Cruikshank (31 December 1845)

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The Boys fleeing Fagin's Hideout

George Cruikshank; engraved by T. Bolton

monthly from 31 December 1845

Woodblock-engraving, framed

Scanned image and 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.].

Passage Illustrated: The Boys and Monks Fleeing from the Police

There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned to Chitling and said,

“When was Fagin took then?”

“Just at dinner-time — two o’clock this afternoon. Charley and I made our lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt, head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too.”

“And Bet?”

“Poor Bet! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,” replied Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, “and went off mad, screaming and raving, and beating her head against the boards; so they put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital — and there she is.”

“Wot’s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.

“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I went up there and see it with my own eyes — is filled with traps.” [Chapter L, "The Pursuit and Escape," p. 286 in the 1846 edition]

Commentary

The Boys fleeing Fagin's Hideout (upper right quadrant on the 31 December 1845 wrapper for the ten-month re-serialisation of the novel by Bradbury and Evans, ending 30 September 1846 — regular and hand-coloured woodblock engraving for the first monthly instalment.

With considerable time to reflect on the significance of the various scenes and characters whom he encountered in the monthly serialisation of Dickens's second novel in Bentley's Miscellany between February 1837 and the spring of 1839, George Cruikshank reached firm conclusions about the relative importance of certain characters and events. He had in fact finished drafting the final illustrations for the three-volume version that Richard Bentley published on 9 November 1838 well in advance of the publication of the plates for the final numbers. Cruikshank realized in the early London sequences that the story constituted a "Newgate Novel"; consequently, he has made sure that Monks, Sikes, and the gang of juvenile pickpockets appear prominently on the wrapper. In the upper-right corner and tumbling well down the page, the boys in escaping from the thieves' kitchen seem to cascade down a flight of stairs.

In the designs of the eleven vignettes, Oliver appears seven times; Sikes three times; and Fagin, Jack Dawkins, and Bull's-Eye twice each. Not mentioned visually although important to the plot, are Monks, Mr. Brownlow, and Nancy — and, indeed, Cruikshank seems to have avoided showing female characters as much as possible. Again at Dickens's instigation, he subsequently provided Chapman and Hall with a frontispiece for the Cheap Edition and a title-page vignette for the Library Edition, tasks that logically should have fallen to Dickens's principal illustrator in the 1840s, Hablot Knight Browne.

Related Material

Bibliography

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

Cohen, Jane Rabb. "George Cruikshank." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 15-38.

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

Davies, Philip. "Warren of Sunless Courts." Lost London, 1870-1945. Croxley Green, Hertfordshire: Transatlantic, 2009. Pp. 258-60.

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

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

_______. The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London & New York: Macmillan, 1892 [contains reproductions of the 1846 wrapper, of the first page of the 1838 Bentley volume, and of the first page of the Prest serial, Oliver Twiss].

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.

_______. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.

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

_______. Oliver Twist. The Annotated Dickens. Ed. Edward Guiliano and Philip Collins. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1986. I, 534-823.

_______. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 3.

Forster, John. "Oliver Twist 1838." The Life of Charles Dickens. Ed. B. W. Matz. The Memorial Edition. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1911. Vol. 1, book 2, chapter 3. Pp. 91-99.

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004. Pp. 1-28.

Created 17 January 2022