Uncaptioned frontispiece (in serial with the last number, April 1848) — illustration by "Phiz" for "Dombey and Son"

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Characters in the Story

Phiz (Hablot K. Browne)

steel-engraving

2 cm wide by 10.5 cm cm high

This plate was the uncaptioned frontispiece for Dickens's Dombey and Son in serial with the last number, which appeared in April 1848.

Click on image to enlarge it.

Details

Group in centre: Paul and Florence on the seashore
Angels carrying baby to heaven
Sea nymphs at bottom
Scenes from Paul’s life
Scenes from Florence’s life
James Carker's nemesis

Image scan by Simon Cooke with 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.]

Commentary

Phiz chose to treat the frontispiece for the last number quite differently than he had the covers for the individual numbers of the periodical publication, which had a hearts and diamonds "house of cards" motif. In contrast, the vignette and frontispiece issued with the final double number, which appeared on 1 April 1848, surrounds the central vignette of Paul and his mother with specific in the novel’s characters and situations, some of which are represented literally and others symbolically. Whereas the wrapper is full of textual cues, such as "Bankers.BK" and "Cheque.BK" (lower left) and "Cash Box" and "Day Book" (upper centre) upon Mr. Dombey sits in a throne-like chair, the frontispiece contains but a single embedded word (that on the cash-box above Paul and his father, just left of centre), so that one cannot fully understand the images refer unless one has an intimate knowledge of the book as a whole — which, of course, the reader of the nineteen monthly parts would possess.

According to Alan Horsman, editor of the standard scholarly edition,

The method of the frontispiece matches that of the cover design for the monthly parts in so far as it combines allegory with the illustration of particular incidents from the novel. The main subject, the unknown sea into which time flows, allows for comedy as well for sentiment and melodrama.The centre, and the top to which the eye is carried from it, emphasize Paul taken from his place beside the actual sea to the metaphorical sea and his mother. But about this centre there is comedy as he grows up, watched by Miss Tox or the Blimbers, or as winds and mermaids bring Sol Gills back to the shore [lower register, centre], or, with less appositeness, Miss Tox sees the Major sinking from her only to be caught in the waves herself, and to have to beg Cupid to save her [lower register, right]. The two death-beds of the early part of the novel and the rescue of Mr. Dombey from suicide by Florence and her child, at the end of it, while the melodrama is fully represented in the rejection and death of Carker [left of centre, in front of a locomotive, cringing from a winged devil] and in Edith and Mr. Dombey obviously dead to each other. The whole answers the design on the wrapper, now that the story is known and complete. [Appendix E, 870-71]

One might add that the scene at the bottom might also represent Walter Gay's surviving the shipwreck on the Dombey & Co. voyage to Barbados. Providentially, he returns to London and marries Florence Dombey. The nymphs also represent the imaginative world so obviously lacking from Dombey's grim universe.

Related Material, including Other Illustrated Editions of Dombey and Son

Dombey and Son (homepage)
O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 1, 1862)
O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 2, 1862)
O. C. Darley's Frontispiece in the New York edition (Vol. 3, 1862)
Sol Eytinge, Junior's 16 Diamond Edition Illustrations (1867)
W. L. Sheppard's 52 Illustrations for the Harper & Bros. Household Edition (1873)
Fred Barnard's 61 Illustrations for the Household Edition (1877)
Groome's illustrations of the Collins Pocket Edition (1900, rpt. 1934)
Kyd's five for Player's Cigarette Cards (1910)
Harry Furniss's 29 illustrations for the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)
Harold Copping's Captain Cuttle's Bright Idea, 1924.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by W. L. Sheppard. The Household Edition. 18 vols. New York: Harper & Co., 1873.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Fred Barnard [62 composite wood-block engravings]. The Works of Charles Dickens. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877. XV.

__________. Dombey and Son. With illustrations by H. K. Browne. The illustrated library Edition. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, c. 1880.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). 8 coloured plates. London and Edinburgh: Caxton and Ballantyne, Hanson, 1910.

__________. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). The Clarendon Edition, ed. Alan Horsman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974 (rpt. of the 12 April 1848 Chapman and Hall edition).

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 16: Dombey and Son."The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. 17, 294-337.

Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London (1899) edition.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Ch. 12, "Work, Work, Work." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. 128-160.

Steig, Michael. Chapter 4. "Dombey and Son: Iconography of Social and Sexual Satire." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978. 86-112.

Vann, J. Don. Chapter 4. "Dombey and Son, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, October 1846-April 1848." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. 67-68.

Created 8 August 2015

Last modified 28 January 2022