Two of Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s ornaments — headpiece on left, tailpiece on right — for Dickens's A Christmas Carol in Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas in the Ticknor and Fields (Boston) edition, 1869 (published at Christmas 1868), p. 3. Wood engravings, 2.0 high by 3.2 cm (¾ by 1 ¼ inches), left, and 2.8 high by 2.2 cm (1 ⅛ by ⅞ inches), right. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Eytinge has provided such artistic elaboration to make this "second edition" of A Christmas Carol a commodity text for the times, such decorative features being common in annuals and seasonal "gift-books" since the 1840s.
Including head-note illustrations, emblems, and ornamental tail-pieces, Ticknor and Fields' December 1868 "twenty-fifth anniversary" second edition has an extensive narrative-pictorial sequence of thirty-four images. These delightful seasonal miniatures Eytinge did not consider worthy of inclusion in his list of eighteen illustrations, five of which are not full-page plates, but woodcuts dropped into the text, in the manner of Christmas Books two through five. These ornamental head- and tailpieces, like the initial letter vignettes for A Holiday Romance in Our Young Folks (1867), reveal Eytinge at his most creative and particular in his detailing, the image of the ledger and fiddle being a particularly interesting juxtaposition of two metonymies, in that it contains objects that exemplify the contrasting life choices that Scrooge as a young clerk had before him: family comforts and music, or the barren life of the account-keeper.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and his Original Illustrators. Columbus: University of Ohio Press, 1980.
Davis, Paul. The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge. New Haven: Yale U. P., 1990.
Dickens, Charles. Christmas Books, illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Junior. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Vol. X.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by Fred Barnard. Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1878. Vol. XVII.
_____. Christmas Books, illustrated by A. A. Dixon. London & Glasgow: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1906.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VIII.
_____. Christmas Books. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. VIII.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
_____. A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.
_____. Christmas Stories. Illustrated by E. A. Abbey. The Household Edition. 16 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876. Vol. III.
Hearne, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Christmas Carol. New York: Avenel, 1989.
Tyrell, T. W. "The 'Marley' Knocker." The Dickensian 20.76 (October 1924): pp. 202-03.
23 December 2010
Last modified 3 January 2026