Dickens's "Ruth Pinch Makes a Pudding" by Harold Copping

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Ruth Pinch Makes a Pudding

Harold Copping

1924

Colour lithography

7 x 5 inches (17.9 x 12.4 cm)

From Character Sketches from Dickens, facing p. 72

The scene illustrated occurs in serial episode fifteen (chapter 39, "Containing Some Further Particulars of the Domestic Economy of the Pinches; with strange news from the City, narrowly concerning Tom" (March 1844).

Scanned image and caption by Philip V. Allingham

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In one of his prefaces to Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens declares that his main object was "to exhibit in a variety of aspects the commonest of all vices; to show how selfishness propagates itself; and to what a grim giant it may grow, from small beginnings." In the person of Pecksniff he created a character that has become a by-word for hypocrisy, whilst other characters, such as Sairey Gamp and old Martin Chuzzlewit, have taken their place in the gallery of immortals. On the reverse side, equally inimitable, are to be found Tom Pinch, Mark Tapley, Ruth Pinch, John Westlock, and scores of others. The selections made from the book represent these phases. Old Martin is introduced in the first excerpt, delightful Ruth Pinch and her brother in the next, whilst the immortal tea party of Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig forms the third. — Matz 68

Bibliography

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University.

Last modified 15 February 2009