Charles Dickens and the Honest Little Boy

Charles Dickens and the Honest Little Boy

Thomas Nast

1868

The Evening Telegram

Like the caricature of Dickens as The British Lion in America, Nast's also obviously derives from "the well-known photograph by Gurney, showing Dickens in his dressing gown standing by a tabIe. . . ."

"F. G. Kitton, commenting on the persistence of the caricaturist in making Dickens adopt the so-calIed cockney treatment of the Ietter "h," said, "Dickens no doubt enjoyed all this good-natured raillery, well knowing it to be a natural consequence of popularity. Such pleasantries are not necessarily the outcome of personal spite, but are more frequentlyinduced by that harmless spirit of fun to whIch all celebrities, in every age and country, have been more or less subjected." [Wilkins, pp. 113-114]

Scanned image and text by George P. Landow.

[This image may be used without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose.]