[Links contain the text illustrated and both Philip V. Allingham's commentaries and his selection of illustrations of the same work by other artists George P. Landow.]
Illustrations for the Centenary Edition of the works by Charles Dickens (1912)
Each contains about thirty illustrations from original drawings by Charles Green, R. I. — Clement Shorter (1912)
- A Christmas Carol (28 plates) Vol. I (1892)
- The Chimes (31 plates) Vol. II (1894)
- The Battle of Life (28 plates) Vol. IV (1893)
- The Haunted Man (31 plates) Vol. V (1895)
Illustrations for Other Dickens Editions (1876, 1898)
Thomas Hardy's Wessex Folk (March-June 1891)
- "Among Those Who Danced Most Continually Were the Two Engaged Couples" (for "The History of the Hardcomes")
- "He Went Out and Closed the Door Behind Him" (for "The Superstitious Man's Story")
- "The Clerk Saw the Hunting Man Pass" (for "Andrey Satchel and the Parson and the Clerk")
- "'Give me those letters', he said."
- "Then Levi Limpet Nudged Timothy and Nicholas" (for "Absent-Mindedness in a Parish Choir")
- "They Had a Good Supper Together, and Talked Over Their Affairs" (for "Incident in the Life of Mr. George Crookhill")
- "He Was Stone-Dead" (for "Netty Sargent's Copyhold")
Other Works
Charles Green's Artistic Output: 1862-1898
Charles Green was a leading member of the group of book illustrators who were then collectively known as "The New Men of the Sixties." He was also a noted water-colourist who became a member of the Royal Institute in 1864 and a full member three years later, and the younger brother of illustrator H. Towneley Green (1836-99). By the time that Charles Green died at the age of fifty-eight in the artists' village of Hampstead, he had completed most of the lithographs for the Pears Centenary Edition of Dickens's The Christmas Books (1843-48), well ahead of the publication of the five-volume series in 1912. He seems to have died with the commission incomplete, leaving the volume The Cricket on the Hearth unattempted; the publisher subsequently enlisted a foreign illustrator, Luigi Rossi, to provide the final twenty-two lithographs for the centenary project.
Green had established himself as a commercial illustrator after his early training at Heatherley's. Green from the first proved himself a talented draughtsman, and worked alongside the lead artist, Whymper, at the illustrated London magazine Once a Week. Green's illustrations appeared in such other popular, large-circulation periodicals as Cassel's and The Graphic. He is now chiefly remembered as a Dickens illustrator, having completed full programs for The Old Curiosity Shop (1876: thirty-two wood-engravings), the Gadshill edition of Great Expectations (1898: ten lithographs), A Christmas Carol (1892: twenty-seven lithographs), The Battle of Life (1893: twenty-nine lithographs), The Chimes (1894: thirty lithographs), and The Haunted Man (1895: thirty lithographs). Largely forgotten are his illustrations for the Rev. John Cumming's Life and Lessons of Our Lord: Unfolded and Illustrated (1864), Isaac Watts' Divine and Moral Songs for Children, and Walter Thornbury's Historical and Legendary Ballads and Songs (1877), but still reproduced are such paintings in his "Scenes from Dickens" as Little Nell and Her Grandfather at the Races, Barnaby Rudge and the Rioters, and The Pickwick Club. During his stay in London during the 1870s, Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh expressed his admiration for the work of Charles Green above all other contemporary English illustrators. Christie's Auction House staged a final sale of the works of the Green brothers on 13 January 1900.
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.]
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. The Battle of Life. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
_____. The Chimes. Introduction by Clement Shorter. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Pears' Centenary Edition. London: A & F Pears, [?1912].
_____. A Christmas Carol. Illustrated by Charles Green, R. I. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
_____. Great Expectations. Illustrated by Charles Green. Gadshill Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1897-1908. Note: All material is reproduced courtesy of The Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LF.
_____. The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time. Illustrated by Charles Green. London: A & F Pears, 1912.
_____. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Charles Green. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. XII.
Hardy, Thomas. Wessex Folk (afterwards renamed A Few Crusted Characters) in Harper's New Monthly Magazine 81 (March-May 1891): 594, 701, 703, 891, 894; 82 (June 1891): 123.
Created 21 September 2015
Last modified 14 June 2020