Ornamental tail-piece: "Chiming Bell" by Sol Eytinge, Jr., for "A Christmas Carol"

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Ornamental head-piece: "Ornamental tail-piece: Bell" (p. 111, middle)

Sol Eytinge

Wood engraving

2.5 high x 3.8 cm.

This ornamental tail-piece for the end of Stave Four in 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.

The image of the chiming bell which concludes the fifth "stave" implies the social reintegration of the reformed miser, for he has realised that, to allude to John Donne's theme of interconnectedness in "Meditation 17" (popularly known as "No Man is an Island," 1624) the bell that might have tolled for the funeral of Timothy Cratchit might well have tolled for Scrooge himself, but that both are now miraculously reprieved: "recalled to life," as if were, through this symbol of the community summoned to worship and to plead in common for forgiveness and increased understanding of the plight of others.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. ucational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]

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