Ornamental tail-piece for "A Christmas Carol": "Ledger, Fiddle, and Tankard" by Sol Eytinge, Jr.,

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Dickens's A Christmas Carol —> Next]

Ornamental head-piece: "Ornamental tail-piece: Ledger, Fiddle, and Tankard" (p. 55, middle)

Sol Eytinge

Wood engraving

2.3 high x 3.8 cm.

This ornamental tail-piece for Dickens's A Christmas Carol in Prose: being a ghost story of Christmas appeared in the Ticknor and Fields (Boston) Edition, 1869 (published at Christmas 1868). Eytinge has provided such artistic elaboration to make this "second edition" of A Christmas Carol a commodity text for the times, such decorative features being common in annuals and seasonal "gift-books" since the 1840s.

These ornamental head- and tailpieces, like the initial letter vignettes for A Holiday Romance in Our Young Folks (1867), reveal Eytinge at his most creative and particular in his detailing, the image of the ledger and fiddle here being a particularly interesting juxtaposition of two metonymies, in that it contains objects that exemplify the contrasting life choices that Scrooge as a young clerk had before him: family comforts and music, or the barren life of the account-keeper.

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. in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose: being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Il. Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.

Last modified 19 August 2011