Left: Fagin by J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") for the 1910 watercolour series: reproduced on John Player Cigarette Card no. 2, and on the cover of Characters from Dickens as depicted by Kyd — Drawn by C. A. T. Brigden. Figure 4 ⅝ inches high by 2 inches wide (11.6 cm high by 5 cm wide). Thi is coupled here with (right): Brigden's own illustration, Western Doorway, Rochester Cathedral. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Commentary: Characters from Dickens/Rochester Cathedral
Right: George Cruikshank's initial serial depiction of the receiver of stolen goods and criminal mastermind, Oliver Twist introduced to the respectable old gentleman (May 1837, instalment no. 4).
In the commentary on the verso of the Kyd illustration, Fagin's criminality is still connected to his being "Jewish," despite Dickens's 1867 revisions, which had markedly reduced the number of times that the narrator refers to Fagin as merely "The Jew." Brigden and his Rochester publisher's choice of Kyd's version of Fagin for their own cover suggests that they believed that the figure would produce instant recognition in modern readers, perhaps owing to the popularity of the Oscar-winning 1968 Lionel Bart musical Oliver!, in which Ron Moody, looking remarkably similar, played the role of the notorious fence.
Brigden's own illustration, of Rochester Cathedral's western door, does not concern Dickens's characters: although he offers no commentary, the intention of including this study seems to have been to associate Dickens with what he intended would be his final resting place. Dickens lived nearby at Gadshill Place, and he featured the town and its cathedral in his last (incomplete) novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). He had, indeed, expressed a wish to be buried in the churchyard there.
Related Material
- Oliver Twist Illustrated, 1837-1910
- Rochester and Chatham in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Real "Dickensland"
Scanned images and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman & Hall: 1846.
The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].
Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1861. 2 vols.
Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. XI.
Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. III.
Ison, Liz. "'All looks were fixed upon one man': 'Fagin' or 'The Jew'? Assessing Dickens's 1867 Textual Revisions of Oliver Twist." The Dickensian No. 525, Vol. 121, Part 1 (Spring 2025): 28-42.
Kyd (Clayton J. Clarke) and Brigden, C. A. T. Characters from Charles Dickens as depicted by Kyd, Drawn by C. A. T. Brigden. Rochester, Kent: John Hallewell Publications, 1978.
MacKenzie, Norman and Jeanne. Dickens: A Life. New York: Oxford U. P., 1979.
Created 5 January 2015
Last modified 2 July 2025