Frederic G. Kitton (1899) has noted that, although limited, Felix Octavius Carr Darley's frontispieces for Dickens has made him "Perhaps the best of Dickens's American illustrators" (223), rivalling the work of fellow Harper's illustrator John McLenan and Ticknor Fields house artist Sol Eytinge, Jr. in the study of Dickens's characters. Some ten years younger than the British author whose works he illustrated in the fifty-five volume so-called "Household Edition" for New York publisher James G. Gregory, Philadelphia-born artist Felix Octavius Carr Darley was recognized in his era as one of the chief illustrators of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, and Edgar Allen Poe, although he also illustrated such lesser American writers as Mary Maples Dodge, George Lippard, Donald Grant Mitchell, Clement Clarke Moore, Frances Parkman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Felix Darley

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frederick Hill Meserve Collection, NPG.81.M634. Restrictions & Rights: Creative Commons (pubic domain)

The son of an English actor, Darley, a skilled draughtsman, did large-scale genre prints such as The Wedding Procession and The Village Blacksmith, as well as historical subjects such as Washington's Entry into New York (from Washington Irving's 1860 five-volume The Life of George Washington, G. P. Putnam, 1862). After moving to New York City in 1848, he became a house artist for Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization from its founding, supplying wood-engravings for the periodical, but lithographs and photogravure prints for such series as the complete works of James Fenimore Cooper (1859-1861), for which, prior to undertaking Dickens, Darley had executed more than five hundred illustrations. His "Household Edition" Dickens illustrations were subsequently reproduced in Houghton Mifflin's Standard Library Edition in thirty-two volumes (Boston, 1894). Darley also provided six plates for Children from Dickens's Novels and eight photogravures for the Imperial Edition of Dickens's works, issued in considerable numbers by Estes and Lauriat, Boston. Leaving New York City in 1859 with his bride, he took up residence at Darley House in Clayton, Delaware, where Charles Dickens visited him while on his second reading tour of the United States in 1867. Although he died in Clayton on 27 March 1888, Felix Octavius Carr Darley is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His best-known picture, often reproduced, remains A Visit from Saint Nicholas for the 1862 Christmas book of the same name by Clement Clarke Moore.

Illustrations from Dickens

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[*** = from Character Sketches from Dickens]

Secondary Materials

Bolton, Theodore. The Book Illustrations of Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1951). Worcester, Mass: American Antiquarian Society, 1952.

Darley, Felix Octavius Carr. Character Sketches from Dickens. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1888. [Folio of prints]

Kitton, Frederic G. "F. O. C. Darley." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman and Hall, 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2004. Pp. 223-224.

Loomis, Richard Stillman, Jr. "45." First American Editions of Charles Dickens. The Calinescu Collection, Part II. Yarmouth, ME: Sumner and Stillman, 2012.

Books illustrated by Darley

Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty. Illustrated by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1862. 2 vols.

________. Christmas Books. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Il. F. O. C. Darley. 2 vols. New York: James G. Gregory, 1861.

________. Great Expectations. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. 2 vols. New York: James G. Gregory, 1861.

________. Hard Times. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. 2 vols. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863.

________. Martin Chuzzlewit. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. 4 vols. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1862.

________. The Pickwick Papers. Il. F. O. C. Darley. Volumes 1 and 2 [originally four volumes in the James G. Gregory Household Edition]. The Riverside Edition. New York and Cambridge, Mass.: Hurd and Houghton, and Riverside, 1872.

________. Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. Works of​Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley. 2 vols. New York: Sheldon & Company, 1864.

________. A Tale of Two Cities. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. 2 vols. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1863.

________. The Uncommercial Traveller. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Il. F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.

Moore, Clement. A Visit from St. Nicholas. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley. Engraved by N. Orr. New York: James G. Gregory, 1862. Accessed 13 April 2023.


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Created 6 November 2015

Last modified 13 April 2023