Harry Furniss's Illustrations for “Our Mutual Friend” (Volume XV, 1910)
Harry Furniss's eighteen-volume edition of The Charles Dickens Library (London: Educational Book Company, 1910) contains some 500 special plates (part of the total of 1200 illustrations) and two volumes of commentary. Volume 17, by J. A. Hammerton, is entitled The Dickens Picture Book: A Record of the Dickens Illustrators. Since the order of the volumes is roughly chronological, the fifteenth volume, entitled Our Mutual Friend, Dickens's last complete novel, follows Great Expectations, the fourteenth volume, and precedes the anthology of Dickens's journalistic seasonal pieces. The sixteenth volume, entitled Christmas Stories, is a reasonably complete collection of Dickens's seasonal short stories, sketches, novellas, and narrative essays from Household Words in the 1850s and All the Year Round in the 1860s. Even more peculiar than the inclusion of these most incidental contributions to the Dickens canon in Christmas Stories is the exclusion of a major novel. Although this edsition, wholly illustrated by a single, appreciative artist thoroughly familiar with the Dickens canon, follows Dickens's publications in a fairly scrupulous chronological fashion, one novel, the incomplete Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), is not represented. Thus, the volume containing Our Mutual Friend constitutes the last major piece of Dickens's fiction in the eighteen-volume edition
For all twenty-eight of the lithographic illustrations for the Our Mutual Friend illustrations in volume 15, the series editor, J. A. Hammerton, has included both succinct captions (given in full below) and extended quotations to demonstrate the textual moment realised in each, even if the subject is a portrait with little or no background as context. Moreover, each quotation (often an editorial reduction) refers to a specific page number, thereby enabling the reader to find the passage illustrated. There are six lithographs devoted to individual character studies for Bella Wilfer, Silas Wegg, Lizzie Hexam, Jenny Wren, Noddie Boffin, and Abbey Potterson.
Furniss's forté in this last illustrated novel in the 1910 edition, however, is depicting dramatic moments such as The Death-Struggle in the Lock (Book Three, Chapter XV). For the Charles Dickens Library Edition of the novel Furniss also provides an ornately bordered title-page, listed as Characters in the Story in the"List of Special Plates" (p. xi). Although each page is 12.2 by 18.4 cm (4 ¾ by 7¼ inches) and the caption below each in upper-case, and below that occurs a multi-line quotation in upper and lower case, each plate is effectively 14.3 cm by 9.2 cm (5 ½ inches by 3 ⅖ inches), the vertically-mounted illustrations usually being framed, and the horizontally-mounted illustrations being vignetted.
Our Mutual Friend (Volume XV)
- 1. Frontispiece: “Keep her out, Lizzie, the tide runs strong here!”
- 2. Engraved title-page: Characters in the Story and Who's Who in “Our Mutual Friend.” A Gallery
- 3. "The Friend of the Family"
- 4. Miss Wilfer signs the Agreement
- 5. Silas Wegg on his way to the Bower
- 6. Miss Podsnsap's Birthday Party
- 7. Lizzie Hexam's Vigil
- 8. Fledgby and Mr. Riah in the Counting-house
- 9. An Interview with Mr. Eugene Wrayburn
- 10. Miss Wilfer descends
- 11. Our Johnnny is ailing
- 12. Jenny Wren, the Dolls' Dressmaker
- 13. Outside the Seamen's Boarding-House
- 14. Charley Hexam renounces his Sister
- 15. Mr. Riah and Miss Wren at The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters
- 16. The Search for “Lives” of Misers
- 17. Mr. Boffin among the Mounds
- 18. Mr. Wrayburn's Method of Ejection
- 19. The Happy Pair of Swindlers
- 20. Silas Wegg makes an Agreeable Promise
- 21. Mr. Boffin Undertakes to See Bella “Righted”
- 22. Bella Wilfer and her Fortune
- 23. Riderhood watches the Sleeping Bradley
- 24. The Wedding Dinner at Greenwich
- 25. Lizzie Hexam to the Rescue
- 26. The Dolls' Dressmaker to See Mr. Fledgby
- 27. Bella's Baby
- 28. The Death-Struggle in the Lock
Related Materials
- Illustrations by Marcus Stone (40 plates from the Chapman and Hall edition of May 1864 through November 1865)
- Frontispieces by Octavius Carr Darley (4 photogravures from the Hurd and Houghton Household Edition of 1866)
- Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (16 plates from the Ticknor and Fields' Diamond Edition of 1867)
- James Mahoney (58 plates from the Chapman and Hall Household Edition of 1875)
- Clayton J. Clarke (two studies from his designs for the Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910)
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images 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.]
Bibliography
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Brigden, C. A. T. "No. 17. Silas Wegg." The Characters from Charles Dickens as depicted by Kyd. Rochester, Kent: John Hallewell, 1978.
The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].
Cordery, Gareth, and Joseph S. Meisel, eds. The Humours of Parliament: Harry Furniss's View of Late-Victorian Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2014. [Review by Françoise Baillet]
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone [40 composite wood-block engravings]. The Authentic Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. 21 Vols. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901 [based on the original nineteen-month serial and the two-volume edition of 1865]. Vol. XIV.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1865. 4 vols.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. VIII.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume IX.
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XV.
Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 21: The Other Novels." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. XVII. Pp. 441-442.
Vann, J. Don. "Our Mutual Friend, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, May 1864—November 1865." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985, 74.
Created 9 February 2020
Last modified 4 August 2025