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Little Nell and Her Grandfather
Fred Barnard
Photogravure from 1884 lithograph
9.5 cm wide by 11.9 cm high
Volume VII, 105 in Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop in the Co-operative Publication Society Edition (1912)
Terry-Lynn Johnson Collection.
"Forth from the city, while it yet slumbered, went the two poor adventurers, wandering they knew not whither."
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Then came the public-house, freshly painted in green and white, with tea-gardens and a bowling green, spurning its old neighbour with the horse-trough where the waggons stopped; then, fields; and then, some houses, one by one, of goodly size with lawns, some even with a lodge where dwelt a porter and his wife. Then came a turnpike; then fields again with trees and hay-stacks; then, a hill, and on the top of that, the traveller might stop, and-looking back at old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke, its cross peeping above the cloud (if the day were clear), and glittering in the sun; and casting his eyes upon the Babel out of which it grew until he traced it down to the furthest outposts of the invading army of bricks and mortar whose station lay for the present nearly at his feet — might feel at last that he was clear of London.
Near such a spot as this, and in a pleasant field, the old man and his little guide (if guide she were, who knew not whither they were bound) sat down to rest. She had had the precaution to furnish her basket with some slices of bread and meat, and here they made their frugal breakfast. [Chapter XV, 132 in the original edition]
Although the editors of the Anglo-American cheap edition had plenty of material to pirate, they appear to have been attempting to give the seventeen-volume edition a uniform look: emotional (dramatic, humorous, sentimental, or nostalgic), yet photographically realistic, with modelled figures and aerial perspective in the backgrounds. Accordingly, a composite woodblock such as Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s 1867 study for the Diamond Edition frontispiece Little Nell and Her Grandfather, anticipating the scene in Chapter 15, would not be suitably "realistic." The editors, then, found Barnard's comparatively recent study of the wayfarers more suitable to the general tenor and style of the 1912 frontispieces, and accordingly adapted the 1884 lithograph as a photogravure.
Left: Sol Eytinge’s frontispiece for the 1867 Diamond Edition, Volume XII, foregrounds the figures, and throws the countryside into relief. Right: Hablot Knight Browne's original serial woodblock, A Rest by the Way; or, Little Nell and Her Grandfather Looking back on London (11 July 1840), contextualizes the wayfarers rather than offering a sentimental close-up.
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock. Illustrated by Phiz, George Cattermole, Samuel Williams, and Daniel Maclise. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1840.
Dickens, Charles. Works. The Old Curiosity Shop. Photogravure-Illustrated Edition. New York and London: Co-operative Publication Society, [n. d., 1912?].
A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens, from the Original Drawings by Frederick Barnard, Being Facsimiles of Original Drawings by Fred. Barnard. Series 2: Tony and Sam Weller; Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter, Bertha; Little Nell and her grandfather, and Rogue Riderhood, Dan'l Peggotty, and Seth Pecksniff. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1884.
Created 12 August 2012
Last modified 26 January 2025