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The Characters in the Story
Harry Furniss
1910
15 cm x 9.3 cm, vignetted
Dickens's Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, The Charles Dickens Library Edition, facing II, frontispiece.
Fin-de-siécle illustrator Harry Furniss's visual overture for the 1836-37 novel, depicting most of the forty-one named characters, and most prominently the affable Samuel Pickwick and his companion, Sam Weller (upper left).
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
As a visual overture, the Furniss ornamental title-page is most effective for those readers already familiar with the characters and situations of the novel; moreover, many of these Picasso-esque sketches foreshadow the full-scale lithographs to come. In the upper-left-hand corner, the Pickwick bows to the reader by way of introducing himself, but Sam Weller stands immediately behind him, in roughly the pose which Furniss has used to introduce him to the narrative-pictorial series in Mr. Pickwick meets Sam Weller in Chapter 10, and anticipating his numerous subsequent appearances. Tony Weller, a great favourite with readers throughout the nineteenth century, occupies a position of prominence, upper right, again anticipating his appearance in the sequence, Mr. Tony Weller.
On the other hand, in the lower-left vignette Furniss is clearly utilising his portrait of the confidence man and out-of-work actor Alfred Jingle (facing 80). Sergeant Buzfuz from "The Trial of Pickwick" is the figure lightly sketched in, just in front of Pickwick, upper left. The irate cabman from the opening of the novel is immediately below Tony Weller, upper right further on down the right column we have Dr Slammer and the duel with Winkle. Jingle in his posture of watching old Mrs Wardle and Joe the Fat Boy in "Tragedy in the Arbour" (facing 104). That the scene between Tupman, Rachael Wardle, and the Fat Boy occurs in the lower left, but not in the Furniss sequence suggests either that Furniss had originally thought to illustrate the scene, but subsequently rejected the scene as already having been well done by previous illustrators — or hat Furniss was deliberately alluding to such illustrations as Phiz's The Fat Boy Awake Again and Mr. Tupman looked round. There was the fat boy. However, since Furniss's thumbnail differs markedly in composition from these earlier illustrations, it seems more likely that he had planned just such a full-scale plate, but abandoned it in favour of Tragedy in the Arbour.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Volume 2. Published by The Educational Book Co. Ltd., London (1910). Hard-back binding in navy cloth covers, gilt title, author lettering, and volume number to the spine, gilt "CD" motif to the upper panel, top edge gilt, illustrated end papers. octavo. 7½" x 5½" (i. e., 19.1 cm long by 12.8 cm wide).
Above: Felix Octavius Carr Darley's beautifully engraved title-page vignettes for the Sheldon & Co. (New York) Household Edition volumes; left: Making a Start (vol. 1) 1861; centre: Joyful Tidings — Book I, Ch. XXXV (vol. 2, 1863); right: Closing in — Book II, Ch. XXX (vol. 4, 1863). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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Created 16 November 2019
Last modified 4 February 2020