"The Title-Page Vignette" — Charles Green's initial illustration for "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1876) (original) (raw)

Passage Foreshadowed: The Shop's Collection of Antique Weapons and Armour

The place through which he made his way at leisure was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory: tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams. The haggard aspect of the little old man was wonderfully suited to the place; he might have groped among old churches and tombs and deserted houses and gathered all the spoils with his own hands. There was nothing in the whole collection but was in keeping with himself nothing that looked older or more worn than he. [Chapter One, page 3]

Commentary

Green has departed from the caricatural style of the original serial's illustrations by George Cattermole and the other members of the team of illustrators whom Dickens described as "The Clock Works." The effects for which Green strives in his program of thirty-nine wood-engravings veer sharply away from the antiquarian and cartoonish styles of Samuel Williams, Daniel Maclise,Phiz, and Cattermole, and towards the new realism of the 1860s. Moreover, the dark plates of John Franklin in Ainsworth's Old St. Paul's (1841) and Hablot Knight Browne in Mervyn Clitheroehave influenced Green, particularly in the frontispiece and tailpiece, which reiterates the perversion and cruelty of the Brasses.

The title-page vignette cleverly echoes the collection of antiques on the dresser in the right-hand section of the frontispiece, but does not exactly repeat the firearms, powder-horn, Greek vase, and sixteenth-century helmet (which is on the floor in The door being opened, the child addressed him as her grandfather on the page facing the title-page). Although Green apparently establishes in the importance of the Old Curiosity Shop as the principal setting of the first movement of the novel in the initial illustrations, this atmospheric interior only appears twice more as the illustrator focusses instead on the figures of Dick Swiveller, the Marchioness, and the villainous dwarf, Daniel Quilp.

Cattermole's Frontispiece: Grandfer Trent and Little Nell (25 April 1840)

The style of the leading member of the team of illustrators, George Cattermole, was ideally to the subject of the quaint interior of the London antique shop that gives the Dickens's fourth novel its title, The door being opened, the child addressed the old man as her grandfather, and told him the little story of our companionship.

Relevant Illustrations from various editions

Bibliography: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841-1924)

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman and Hall, 1841. Rpt., 1900 in The Authentic Edition.

_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Thomas Worth. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1872. VI.

_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. XII.

_____. The Dickens Souvenir Book. Illustrated by Fred Barnard and Others. London: Chapman and Hall, 1912.

_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 viols. London: Educational Book, 1910. V.

Kitton, Frederic George. "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne), a Memoir, Including a Selection From His Correspondence and Notes on His Principal Works. London, George Redway, 1882.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini. Character Sketches from Dickens. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.

Last modified 14 December 2019