Dickens's "The Fat Boy Awake" by Harold Copping (1924)

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The Fat Boy Awake

Harold Copping

1924

Colour lithography

Approximately 7 x 5 inches (17.9 x 12.4 cm)

From Character Sketches from Dickens, facing p. 20.

Matz subtitles this scene "Mr. Tupman is smitten" because it involves a humorously romantic encounter with "the spinster aunt," Miss Rachel Wardle, and one of Pickwick's "reporters." Here, just as Tupman begins courting Miss Wardle in the garden after the Dingley Dell versus Muddleton cricket match, Joe, Wardle's obese, perpetually sleepy servant, interrupts the couple (Part 3, June 1836, Ch. 8).

Scanned image, caption, and the addition of text and images below by Philip V. Allingham

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The Pickwick Papers by B.W. Matz and Kate Perugini

The Pickwick Papers was first published in monthly parts in 1836, and projected Dickens to the top rung of the ladder of fame, from which he never descended. His main object in writing it, he has told us, was "to place before the reader a constant succession of characters and incidents; to paint them in as vivid colours as he could command, and to render them, at the same time, life-like and amusing." All this he succeeded to do with amazing success, and the book remains to-day one of the most popular in the language, and retains that position by its exuberant humour.

The four extracts from its pages amply testify to this. They will be familiar to all readers, but, unlike most humorous stories, they can be read and read again with pure delight. [14].

The Original Buss Illustration of this scene (June 1836) & the Household Edition (1874)

Left: The original illustration by R. W. Buss that was later replaced by the Phiz illustration in the November 1837 volume edition: The Arbour Scene. Right: Phiz's revised version of this scene for the Household Edition, Mr. Tupman looked round. There was the fat boy (1874). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Other Illustrations of the Fat Boy (1910)

Left: Player's Cigarette Card No. 21, a watercolour version of Joe, standing up but still asleep: The Fat Boy (1910). Centre: Kyd's later illustration from The Characters of Charles Dickens portrayed in a series of original watercolours by "Kyd." Right: Harry Furniss's Joe, The Fat Boy in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Other Copping Representations of Joe, The Fat Boy

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, Robert W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman & Hall: 1836-37.

Dickens, Charles. "Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Robert Seymour and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall, 1896.

Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.

Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1924.

Matz, Bernard W., and Kate Perugini [Charles Dickens' daughter]. Character Sketches from Dickens. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924.

Created 20 February 2009

Last modified 22 September 2023