The Characters in the Story

Harry Furniss

1910

14.5 x 9.4 cm framed

Initial illustration for A Christmas Carol in Christmas Books, Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), vol. 8, title-page.

A feature of each volume in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), "The Characters in the Stories," as Furniss has entitled the thumbnail vignettes that form the four borders of the title-page, includes most of the characters in the volume: in the top register, left to right, are the principals of A Christmas Carol — (upper left-hand corner) Scrooge's nephew Fred and his wife — [Commentary continued below.]

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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Details

• Furniss's initials as they appear throughout the sixteen volumes
• left to right: Marley's Ghost, Scrooge, The Spirit of Christmas Present
• Christmas Past and Christmas Yet To Come; The Cratchits' Christmas Dinner
• The Peerybingles and Tilly Slowboy
• Redlaw and the Phantom, with the street boy, and Milly and the student
• Michael Warden and the Jeddler sisters
• Sir Joseph Bowley, Trotty and Meggy Veck

Commentary

(their class status suggested by their bourgeois dress), Marley's Ghost, Scrooge ion his nightshirt and nightcap, the expansive Spirit of Christmas Present (centre, presiding over the entire page with an embracing gesture and his torch, welcoming the reader), the diminutive Christmas Past (identified by the conical hat), the hooded Spirit of Christmasses Yet To Come, and in the upper-right corner the exultant Cratchits welcoming the arrival at the table of their plum pudding; the right-hand border, top to bottom:from The Cricket on the Hearth, Dot welcoming carrier John Peerybingle home, Tilly Slowboy (which appears to be a study for the fully developed illustration), Bertha and Caleb Plummer, and Tackleton with May Fielding and her mother; bottom register, right to left: from The Haunted Man, Professor Redlaw and the Phantom, Milly and the student, and the Tetterbys; from The Battle of Life, Clemency Newcome and Bejamin Britain, Michael Warden, the Jeddler sisters, Dr. Jeddler and Alfred, and (lower left corner) the attorneys Snitchey and Craggs; lower left to upper left, from The Chimes Alderman Cute and his hangers-on, Richard the young blacksmith, the bells in the church tower, Sir Joseph Bowley dictating letters to his secretary, Meggy Veck (the study for Trotty's daughter in "Trotty Veck's Dinner"), Trotty Veck himself, and Tugby as Sir Joseph's uniformed porter.

Thus, Furniss has provided a visual overture to the anthology that encompasses some forty-five distinct figures in the sort of ornamental frame that precedes each of the eighteen volumes (including Hammerton's The Dickens Picture Book and The Dickens Companion, volumes seventeen and eighteen). Whereas the top register is devoted entirely to A Christmas Carol with nine identifiable figures, the other sides are dominated by no single text. The bottom register, containing seventeen figures, is divided between The Haunted Man (eight figures, including a seated child who is probably the unnamed street urchin) and The Battle of Life (nine figures). Thus, Furniss attests to the continuing popularity of The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth by devoting the left-hand and right-hand borders to figures from these novellas. In particular, Furniss's focus on the characters from The Chimes of 1844, written during the depth of the Hungry Forties, implies the enduring popularity of the most socially conscious and realistic of the Christmas Books, even though the work has since faded into relative obscurity, the hard times it encapsulates having been replaced in the minds of twentieth-century readers by memories of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Bibliography

Davis, Paul. The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. New Haven: Yale U. , 1990.

Dickens, Charles. The Christmas Books. Il. Harry Furniss. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. 8.

Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Il. E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.

Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books. Il. Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878.

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Il. John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.

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Last modified 29 May 2013