Introduction: A Brace of Youthful Jeux d'esprit
When Dickens had finished the biography of the clown Joseph Grimaldi, his Pickwick publishers, Chapman and Hall, gave him a new commission: a three-shilling, miniature comic book of seventy-six pages (plus, of course, four pages of the enterprising firm's advertising). Entitled Sketches of Young Gentlemen, it was to be a follow-up to the similarly formatted Sketches of Young Ladies by "Quiz" (the nom-de-plume of the Reverend Edward Caswall), but likewise illustrated by "Phiz." In fact, Dickens's name (or even his pen-name "Boz") does not appear on the title-page, as if the publisher is implying that this slight volume is also by "Quiz." However, as Michael Slater has noted, the cause of the anonymity was purely commercial: "Dickens was breaking his contract with Bentley which prohibited him from writing for anyone ese apart from the new periodical work promised to Chapman and Hall. His fee was £125 which, he noted in the short-lived diary he began keeping on New Year's Day, 'for such a little book without my name to it, is pretty well'" (113). In his authoritative biography, Ackroyd spares only a few words for the first pamphlet: "it is a volume of sharp and well sustained comic sketches in which Dickens characteristically turns human beings into various 'types' in the approved early nineteenth-century manner" (241).
The companion volume, Sketches of Young Couples (1840), comes from the period when Dickens was editing and writing most of the periodical Master Humphrey's Clock (from 31 March 1840), for which he was to receive £50 per weekly number, plus fifty per cent of the net profits. The publishers seem to have intended this new comic-book to enable them and their young author to cash in on the Queen's forthcoming marriage to Prince Albert: behind all of these charming couples would be the royal couple themselves, and, of course, Katherine and Charles Dickens, now happily married for the past four years, since 2 April 1836. The formula is much the same: here, eleven facetious sketches and a cursory conclusion; in the previous volume, twelve such humorous descriptions of contemporary types, a dedication, and a perfunctory conclusion.
Taken as companions, these slender volumes, delightfully illustrated by the inimitable Phiz, offer satirical portraits of London, middle-class young people in the early years of Victoria's reign. Dickens begins with a cautionary note about Leap Year:
Prefaced by an 'urgent remonstrance' to the gentlemen of England, warning them that the young Queen Victoria's announcement of her intention to marry Prince Albert may lead to great numbers of her female subjects taking a similar nuptial initiative owing to Leap Year of 1840 (traditionally a woman could make a proposal of marriage only in a leap year). These sketches were not collected in any lifetime edition of CD's works. [The Dickens Index, 237]
Background Information
- Hablot Knight Browne, 1815-1882; A Brief Biography
- The Old Curiosity Shop Illustrated: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works"
Illustrations for Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838)
- 1. Cover: Sketches of Young Gentleman.
- 2. Frontispiece: The Military Young Gentlemen (facing title-page; for Ch. IV)
- 3. Out and Out Young Gentleman (facing p. 8, Ch. II)
- 4. The Domestic Young Gentleman (facing p. 33, Ch. VI)
- 5. The Funny Young Gentleman (facing p. 44, Ch. VIII)
- 6. The Poetical Yioung Gentleman/span> (facing p. 55, Ch. X)
- 7. The Young Ladies' Young Gentleman (facing p. 66, Ch. XII)
Illustrations for Sketches of Young Couples (1840)
- 1. Cover: Sketches of Young Couples.
- 2. Departure of the Young Couple (facing title-page, for Ch. II)
- 3. The Loving Couple (facing p. 26, Ch. IV)
- 4. The Couple who dote upon their Children (facing p. 41, Ch. VI)
- 5. The nice little Couple (facing p. 61, Ch. IX)
- 6. The Couple who coddle themselves (facing p. 75, Ch. XI)
- 7. The old Couple. (facing p. 82, Ch. XII)
Scanned images and texts by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. "Sketches of Young Couples." The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. P. 237.
Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.
Caswell, Edward. Sketches of Young Ladies: In Which These Interesting Members of the Animal Kingdom Are Classified, According to Their Several Instincts. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 31 December 1836.
Dickens, Charles. Sketches of Young Couples. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 1840.
Dickens, Charles. Sketches of Young Gentlemen. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. London: Chapman and Hall, 1838.
Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.
Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-85.
Created 21 April 2023