Half-Title Vignette for "Sketches by Boz" — Cruikshank's illustration for Chapman & Hall (1837)

Sketches by Boz (half-title vignette) by George Cruikshank. Steel-engraving. 14.8 cm high x 8.3 cm wide (5 ¾ by 3 ⅛ inches). Cruikshank's original illustration for the 1836 Second Series of Dickens's Sketches by Boz, duodecimo, facing frontispiece. First published by John Macrone, St. James's Square, London in 1836. The later half-title vignettes (November 1837 and June 1839) in octavo exhibit certain changes that Cruikshank made in the crowd of well-wishers below the hot-air balloon compared the original 1836 version. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

The Forty Cruikshank Illustrations and the Half-Title Vignette

Between 1833 and 1836 Dickens's journalistic studies or "sketches" of London life seized the public's imagination, appearing in such periodicals as Bell's Life in London, The Morning Chronicle, and The Evening Chronicle before being anthologized, first by John Macrone in two volumes in February 1836, with sixteen illustrations by veteran caricaturist George Cruikshank. The "Second Series Macrone edition, "Complete in one volume," contains just twenty sketches but just nine half-page plates which now complemented sketches published previously in such unillustrated journals as Bell's Life in London:

When Chapman and Hall re-issued the London sketches in monthly parts, each instalment included two of Cruikshank's copper-plate engravings; however, the change in format from the Macrone two-volume duodecimo to the Chapman and Hall octavo required that Cruikshank re-engrave the entire series of illustrations for the monthly parts and the single-volume edition of 1839. Those illustrations, whether humorous or pathetic, did not merely constitute a "value-added" feature to the text; rather, they guided the reading of highly disparate material, providing a focal point (whether comic or tragic) for nearly half of the fifty-six pieces that now constitute Sketches by "Boz," Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People. The character comedy, farce, immediacy, and topicality of the texts illustrated rendered them doubly popular with a broad readership, focussing the reader's attention on key moments in the forthcoming action and principal characters, shedding light in advance on characters' relationships and motivations, and signalling in the short stories (under "Tales") important points in the plot.

Dickens's sudden fame, directly created by the runaway success of the Pickwick Papers, was augmented by the reification of his status as a best-selling author, observer, and humourist in John Macrone's two-volume set of Sketches by "Boz", published in early February 1836, a month ahead of the first serial number of Pickwick. In effect, in the spring of 1836 the twenty-four-year-old Dickens presented himself to the reading public as the author of the disconnected Sketches as the observant, witty "Boz" (individual pieces anthologised) simultaneously with his picaresque satire of a "learned" society of amateurs whose misadventures would take them beyond the metropolis as episodes in a more connected narrative — a novel. Thus, he appeared in print by two different publishers as a combination of crusading journalist, social commentator, deft humourist, rollicking entertainer, trenchant satirist, and prolific novelist all within the space of two months early in 1836 — as 'Boz' rather than as Charles Dickens, the name he would claim for the title-pages of the three-volume edition of Oliver Twist (November 1838).

The first edition of the John Macrone, two-volume duodecimo set of 1836, is illustrated throughout with just ten copper-plate engravings by George Cruikshank. Volumes I and II each have a frontispiece and seven subsequent illustrations, for a total of sixteen illustrations in the Macrone second edition (dated 1836, but in fact published in 1837, as the regular title-page indicates). The Second Series has a frontispiece, engraved title-page, and eight subsequent illustrations. Thus, Cruikshank engraved a total of twenty-five illustrations before the monthly serialisation by Chapman and Hall, November 1837 through June 1839, a twenty-month project involving two illustrations for each monthly number, as had been the case in their Pickwick Papers.

Although most of the sketches in this work were originally published as separate entries in various magazines and journals between 1833 and 1836, the later edition does represent the first appearance of five of the sketches: "A Visit to Newgate," "The Black Veil," "The Great Winglebury Duel," "Our Next-Door Neighbours," and "The Drunkard's Death."

Cruikshank and Dickens Ascend to Literary Heights Aux Montgolfière (1836)

In the half-title vignette for Sketches by Boz (1836), Cruikshank has depicted himself and Dickens as ascending in a hot-air balloon, an emblematic reflection of the young author's fast-rising popularity and Cruikshank's continuing to be the biggest name in contemporary book and periodical illustration — and indeed the forty illustrations that he completed for the Chapman and Hall re-publication of the Sketches in monthly numbers constitute some of his finest work, in which he has utilised realism conditioned by his own peculiar whimsy and grounded in his own intimate knowledge of London's streets and his accurate assessment of Dickens's characters. As the artist and writer wave Cross-of-St. George flags, reifying the bourgeois "Englishness" of their textual and visual humour, rising aux Montgolfière above the heads of their urban well-wishers (a solidly upper-middle class assembly, fashionably dressed), the gentlemen raise their hats (one on a cane) while the ladies wave silk handkerchiefs. Although "Boz" appears prominently in the centre, Cruikshank's over-sized signature dominates the bottom register, implying the mixed-media nature of the instalments, a formula with which Chapman and Hall had met astounding success both financial and critical in the monthly instalments of Pickwick. That the ascent is framed by English oaks rather than a cityscape may reflect the circumstances of the first hot-air balloon flight in 1783, since that epoch-making ascent began on the park-like grounds of the Chateau de la Muette on the western outskirts of Paris, although certainly one might argue that the scene could be set in Vauxhall Gardens, the sketch for which specifically mentions such a hot-air balloon.

During the following year (1837) Macrone published a Second Series of the "Sketches" in one volume, uniform in size and character with its predecessors, and containing ten etchings by Cruikshank; for the second edition of this extra volume two additional illustrations were done, viz., The Last Cab-Driver and May-day in the Evening [sic]. It was at this time that Dickens repurchased from Macrone the entire copyright of the "Sketches," and arranged with Chapman & Hall for a complete edition, to be issued in shilling monthly parts, octavo size, the first number appearing in November of that year. The completed work contained all the Cruikshank plates (except that entitled The Free and Easy, which, for some unexplained reason, was cancelled) and the following [twelve] new subjects:

Cruikshank also produced a design for the pink wrapper enclosing each of the twenty monthly parts; this was engraved on wood by John Jackson, the original drawing (adapted from one the artist had previously made for Macrone) being now in the possession of Mr. William Wright, of Paris. The subject of the frontispiece is the same as that of the title-page in the Second Series. The alteration in the size of the illustrations for this cheap edition necessitated larger plates, so that the artist was compelled to re-etch his designs. These reproductions, although on an extended scale, were executed with even a greater degree of finish, and contain more "colour" than those in the first issue; but the general treatment of the smaller etchings is more pleasing by reason of the superior freedom of line therein displayed. As might be anticipated, a comparison of the two sets of illustrations discloses certain slight variations, which are especially noticeable in the following plates: Greenwich Fair; musicians and male dancer added on left. Election for Beadle; three more children belonging to Mr. Bung's family on right, and two more of Mr. Spruggins's family on left, thus making up the full complement in each case. The First of May (originally entitled "May-day in the Evening"); the drummer on the left, in the first edition, looks straight before him, while in the octavo edition he turns his face towards the girl with the parasol. London Recreations; in the larger design the small child on the right is stooping to reach a ball, which is not shown in the earlier plate. [Kitton 4]

Scanned images, formatting, 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 person who scanned them, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.

Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens: Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

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

Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz. Second series. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: John Macrone, 1836.

Dickens, Charles. "The Election for the Beadle." "Our Parish." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839, rpt. 1890.

Dickens, Charles. "The Election for the Beadle." "Our Parish." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Vol. XIII.

Dickens, Charles. "The Election for the Beadle." Sketches by Boz Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-Day People. Ed. Thea Holme. The Oxford Illustrated Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1957; rpt., 1987. Pp. 18-24.

Hammerton, J. A. "The Story of this Book." Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-Day People. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 1. Pp. i-v.

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Long, William F., and Paul Schlicke. "Bung Against Spruggins: Reform in 'Our Parish.'" Dickens Quarterly 34, 1 (March 2017): 5-13.

Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.

Created 31 March 2017

last updated 16 May 2023