In 1850, the Times began publishing articles exposing the Court of Chancery, and the quagmire-like delays and proceedings inherent in the legal system. Here was Dickens’s opportunity. In Bleak House, his ninth novel, he attacked the abuses in the Courts, and continued his portrayal of London slums. Again ‘Phiz’ (Dickens’s ‘cher Brune’) illustrated the novel, which among others featured Esther Summerson, Mrs Jellyby, Krook (who dies by spontaneous combustion), Jo, and Sir Leicester Dedlock. The first instalment of 25,000 copies sold out and had to be reprinted; Dickens himself wrote: ‘It is an enormous success’. On display is the first printing of the first book edition, which sold for one guinea (£1 1s).
[Title page and frontispiece with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne from Charles Dickens's Bleak House. 1st book edition, 1st printing. ]
Hablot Browne’s cartoon on the top of the first part of Little Dorrit depicts a procession of decrepit, fool-like individuals, including a dozing Britannia. The image matches Dickens’s satiric attack in the book on the ruling class and their ineptitude. His famed Circumlocution Office highlights well civil service bureaucracy and incompetence. His strong feelings against imprisonment for debt also allowed use of the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison, where ‘heroine’ Amy Dorrit was born, and her delusional father William is the longest serving inmate. Arthur Clennam, a guilt-ridden ‘anti-hero’, is determined to rescue Amy from her plight. Originally titled Nobody’s Fault, Little Dorrit was the last of Dickens’s novels issued by Bradbury and Evans. Note Amy’s ‘sunny’ appearance on the title-page.
[Cover of the first part of Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit, December 1855. ]
Hablot Browne’s cartoon on the top of the first part of Little Dorrit depicts a procession of decrepit, fool-like individuals, including a dozing Britannia. The image matches Dickens’s satiric attack in the book on the ruling class and their ineptitude. His famed Circumlocution Office highlights well civil service bureaucracy and incompetence. His strong feelings against imprisonment for debt also allowed use of the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison, where ‘heroine’ Amy Dorrit was born, and her delusional father William is the longest serving inmate. Arthur Clennam, a guilt-ridden ‘anti-hero’, is determined to rescue Amy from her plight. Originally titled Nobody’s Fault, Little Dorrit was the last of Dickens’s novels issued by Bradbury and Evans. Note Amy’s ‘sunny’ appearance on the title-page.
[Title page and frontispiece with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne from Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit. 1st book edition.]
By February 1838, Charles Dickens had begun Nicholas Nickleby, his third novel. Published serially between April 1838 and October 1839, he was paid £150 per number, with a bonus offered of £1500 on completion. The soon-to-be-more-famous Hablot Knight Browne (‘Phiz’) illustrated the novel. There was fieldwork involved. In 1838, both men travelled to Yorkshire to look at schools; Dotheboys Hall was the reconstituted literary result. This first book edition also contains Daniel Maclise’s engraved portrait of Dickens as well as coloured plates by ‘Peter Palette’, a pseudonym for Thomas Onwhyn, a later Punch illustrator.
[The internal economy of Dotheboys Hall. An illustration by Hablot Knight Browne in Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]
By his eighth novel, David Copperfield, Dickens was ready for a little more self-revelation, albeit with some difficulty in ‘dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world.’ David Copperfield (1850), his so-called ‘favourite child’, is the most autobiographical of his works, and is considered by scholars to be the dividing line between his early and later novels. Mirrored in the book are his Blacking Factory experiences; his early love interest with Maria Beadnell; and his early writing career. And of course there are the characters: Heep, Steerforth, Betsy Trotwood, Mr Dick, and Micawber, who is despatched to Australia. Two of Dickens’s sons lived in Australia and he contemplated a reading tour ‘down-under’. Unfortunately, this did not happen.
[I fall into captivity. Illustration by Phiz opposite page 274 in Charles Dickens's The Personal History of David Copperfield, 1st book edition, 1st issue.]
In the preface to the Cheap Edition of Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens wrote: ‘My main object in the story was, to exhibit in a variety of aspects the commonest of all vices; to show how Selfishness propagates itself.’ In fact, unlike his approach to his previous works, Dickens had an overall design and unifying theme for Martin Chuzzlewit. Published in monthly parts between January 1843 and July 1844, and edited by ‘Boz’ (used for the last time), the work was then produced in book form (as displayed). The character of Pecksniff, that epitome of hypocrisy, is delineated here by ‘Phiz’.
[Mr Pecksniff on his Mission. Illustration by Phiz facing page 235 in Charles Dickens's The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, 1st book edition.]
In early March 1836, Dickens signed a contract with the fledging firm of Chapman and Hall, who gambled on serial publication of Pickwick Papers, Dickens’s first novel. He was to receive £14 for each 12,000-word instalment. Only 1,000 of the first number were printed; by late November 1837, 40,000 copies were being sold. The appearance of Sam Weller clinched Dickens’s reputation, and Pickwick Papers was a runaway bestseller. This first book edition of the twenty instalments contains illustrations by Robert Seymour, who completed them up to the second number; R. W. Buss, who was an interim illustrator; and then 20 year old Hablot Browne, who would become Dickens’s most consistent artistic collaborator.
[Title page and frontispiece from Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. 1st bound edition. Illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz).]
Dickens must have been well satisfied with reader responses to Dombey and Son, which he began in Lausanne, continued in Paris, and finished in Brighton, Broadstairs and London. The first number sold 30,000, an increase over Martin Chuzzlewhit, but below sales of Nicholas Nickleby. He netted £2200 for the first six months, including his £100 per month payment from the publishers. According to the reckoning of his friend Forster, he had finally achieved financial security. Like Martin Chuzzlewhit, the book had a tight planned structure; unlike Chuzzlewhit, it dealt with the theme of pride.
[Title page and frontispiece (by Phiz) from Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son.]