"The Last Spirit (Apparition), 'Die Letzte Erscheinung'" after John Leech in the Tauchnitz German language edition of "A Christmas Carol, <em>Eine Weihnachtsgeschichte</em>"

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The Last Apparition, “Die Letzte Erscheinung”

John Leech

1844

wood-engraving based on the Chapman and Hall engraving, p. 114 (in "Stave Four, The Last Spirit").

Tauchnitz German language edition of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol

Image scan courtesy of Isabel Vila Cabanes, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, and the Digital Services of the Berlin Staatsbibliotek.

Text and formatting 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. ]

Although not fundamentally altered, "The Last Apparition" has been transformed from a coloured engraving into a sharper black-and-white wood-engraving in which the background — a blackened block of London flats opposite the churchyard — is much more pronounced. The wood-engraver made of the error of reversing the "z" in "Ebenezer Scrooge" on the grave marker.

Although the Leech engraving is entitled "The Last of the Spirits", the German translation involves the concept of supernatural "phenomenon," or "apparition," or even "visitation." More clearly than the English original, this German copy makes explicit the connection between the capitalistic system represented by Scrooge and urban blight, as the halking tenements are directly across the street from the crowded burial ground, a highly unsanitary situation for the urban populace. Both are key-hole vignettes, and the detailing in the 1844 plate closely resembles that of the original, except that the German engraver has placed the area railing on the horizontal, and has run the cross-member slightly outside the frame of the vignette. More significantly, the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come is a more substantial figure in the 1844 plate. Finally, the dessicated tree that emphasizes the form of the unknowable spirit recalls for English but not for German readers the blighted tree in "Ignorance and Want", a product like the allegorical children of an irresponsible factory system that places profit over the welfare of either working people or the environment, a theme which Dickens underscores in Hard Times (1854).

Bibliography

A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. With a coloured Etching. By Charles Dickens Edition Sanctioned By The Author. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1843; rev., 1846.

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

Diezmann, August, trans. Charles Dickens's Eine Weihnachtsgeschichte: Mit 2 Stahlstichen / Von Charles Dickens. Deutsch von Dr. A. Diezmann Author: Dickens, Charles Other persons: Diezmann, August [Transl.] Published: Leipzig, ... Verlag von Otto Wigand, 1844 Printer: Wigand, Otto; Tauchnitz, Bernhard Extent: IV, 137 S., [2] Bl.. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1844.

Last modified 1 July 2013