"The Fat Boy" by Harold Copping (1924)

The Fat Boy

Harold Copping

12.5 cm by 7.5 cm (4 ⅞ by 3 inches), vignetted.

Photographic reproduction of line drawing

Dickens' Dream Children

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. .]

Commentary: "Here he did very little work and ate and drank prodigiously" (120)

Since the subject of the twelfth chapter is Joe, the Fat Boy, Mary Angela Dickens and her lead illustrator, Harold Copping, have introduced Joe asleep, in contrast to his appearance in the main lithograph, The Fat Boy Awake (facing p. 120).

Joe, Joe! called Mr. Wardle when the sham fight was over and the sham enemies had gone off to dinner, "time for us to feed now, eh, Mr. Pickwick? Bother that boy, he's gone to sleep again. Be good enough to pinch him, sir — in the leg, if you please — nothing else wakes him; thank you. [119]

The Fat Boy in Other Editions of the Novel (1836 to 1912)

Phiz's original illustration depicts an extremely portly, uniformed page in The Fat Boy Awake Again (first volume edition, November, 1837)
Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s 1867 Diamond Edition character study exaggerates the boy's weight problem for comic effect in The Fat Boy
Thomas Nast's American Household Edition offers a cartoon-like rendering of the yawning Fat Boy in "He knows nothing of what has happened," he whispered (1873)
Phiz's revised illustration depicts a less corpulent, blonde-haired page in Mr. Tupman looked round. There was the fat boy (Household Edition, 1874)
Two Harry Furniss studies of Joe, The Fat Boy in the Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910)

Other Copping Representations of Joe, The Fat Boy

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Robert Seymour, Robert W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). London: Chapman & Hall: 1836-37.

Dickens, Charles. "Pickwick Papers. Illustrated by Robert Seymour and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall, 1896.

Dickens, Mary Angela, Percy Fitzgerald, Captain Edric Vredenburg, and Others. Illustrated by Harold Copping with eleven coloured lithographs. Children's Stories from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1893.

Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1924.

Matz, Bernard W., and Kate Perigini [Charles Dickens' daughter]. Character Sketches from Dickens. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924.

Created 22 September 2023