Engraved Title-page for "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" by Sir Luke Fildes (1870)

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Engraved Title-page

Sir Luke Fildes

September 1870

Wood-engraving

13.8 cm by 11 cm (5 ⅜ by 4 ¼ inches), framed.

Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: The Tower

An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of this possibility. [Chapter I, "The Dawn," 1]

Bibliography

Cohen, Jane R. "Chapter 18: Luke Fildes." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980. Pp. 221-234.

Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. With Illustrations [by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A.] London: Chapman and Hall Limited, 193, Piccadilly. 1870.

_______. The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Reprinted Pieces and Other Stories. With Thirty Illustrations by L. Fildes, E. G. Dalziel, and F. Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1879. Vol. 20.

Walters, J. Cuming. The Complete "Mystery of Edwin Drood" by Charles Dickens: The History, Continuations, and Solutions (1870-1912). With a portrait [by Fildes in 1870]. Illustrations by Sir Luke Fildes, R. A., [and] F. G. Kitton. Facsmiles and a bibliography. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.

Created 13 February 2007

Last updated 17 July 2023