Untitled vignette: On the Marshes, approaching the Lime-kiln
F. A. Fraser
Wood engraving
7.3 x 5.7 cm
Second illustration for Great Expectations in the Household Edition (1876), facing frontispiece.
See commentary below.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Passage Illustrated
It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. The lime was burning with a sluggish stiffling smell, but the fires were made up and left, and no workmen were visible. Hard by was a small stone quarry. It lay directly in my way, and had been worked that day, as I saw by the tools and barrows that were left lying about. [Chapter 53, p. 197]
Commentary
As Dickens's protagonist approaches the isolated lime-kiln on the Marshes, the gloomy atmosphere in this "dark plate" makes the reader apprehensive about Pip's safety. Although this scene is suddenly fraught with tension and as Pip's brush with death marks the beginning of his epiphany, few illustrators have dealt with it, despite the fact that Dickens's chosen illustrator, Marcus Stone, devoted one of his eight wood engravings to this moment in On the Marshes, by the Lime-kiln in the first British illustrated edition.
Related Materials
- A Comparison of Fraser's Illustrations in the original 1870s Household Edition plates and those in the Collier New York edition of 1900
- J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd")
(2 plates) - Felix O. C. Darley (2 plates)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (8 wood-engravings)
- Harry Furniss
- John McLenan (40 weekly wood-engravings)
- Frederic W. Pailthorpe (12 plates)
- Marcus Stone (8 plates)
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. The Illustrated Library Edition. Il. Marcus Stone. London: Chapman and Hall, 1862.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Il. F. A. Fraser. Volume 11 of the Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Related material
- Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations
- Bibliography of works relevant to illustrations of Great Expectations
- Francis A. Fraser’s Illustrations of works by Charles Dickens
Other Artists’ Illustrations for Dickens's Great Expectations
- Edward Ardizzone (2 plates selected)
- H. M. Brock (8 lithographs)
- J. Clayton Clarke ("Kyd") (2 lithographs from watercolours)
- Felix O. C. Darley (2 plates)
- Sol Eytinge, Jr. (8 wood engravings)
- Harry Furniss (28 plates)
- Charles Green (8 lithographs)
- Frederic W. Pailthorpe (12 lithographs)
- Marcus Stone (8 wood engravings)
- John McLenan (40 wood engravings)
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F. A.
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NextCreated 19 March 2004
Last modified 25 December 2019