[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> The Haunted Man —> John Tenniel —> Charles Dickens —> Next]
Frontispiece
John Tenniel; engraver, Martin & Corbould.
1848
Image only: 7.4 cm by 7 cm (3 by 2 ¾ inches), framed.
Initial illustration for Dickens's The Haunted Man, facing the frontispiece (left).
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image 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 photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
As Robert L. Patten in "Bargain Haunters" notes, Dickens over the 1840s was developing a new respect for motherhood, for the nurturing and caring figure responsible for the next generation psychologically and socially, such as Sophia Tetterby and Milly Swidger in the present novella. There is, in short, more to Mrs. Cratchit than roasting the Christmas goose and presiding over the Christmas pudding. The opening illustration in the regular programme, Chapter I. The Gift Bestowed by John Tenniel, admirably sounds the keynote, showing how through stimulating the imagination the indulgent mother sets the child on his or her own two feet for the journey through life. Hence, in the engraved title-page, Dickens and his new Christmas Book illustrator, Sir John Tenniel, present us with allegorical female mentors and a child almost flying towards life.
This book has a very troubled beginning; Dickens wrote and scribbled out and rewrote the opening, which he packed with information anticipating later events and revelations. [Patten, "Bargain Hunters," 239]
And Tenniel here seems deliberately ambiguous about the identities of the two figures who accompany the toddler. The shrouded figure to the right recalls the nebulous and tentative Christmas Yet To Come in A Christmas Carol, specifically depicted as pointing downward, to Scrooge's future grave, in Leech's The Last of the Spirits — The Pointing Finger (1843). Here, this gloomy, shrouded figure (who may be crying into its sleeve) represents one less desirable path in life, a negative destiny for the ebullient child, and may represent the misfortune that Catherine Dickens had recently suffered — a miscarriage in December, 1847. The angelic, winged figure clad in white and pointing left with her left hand as she guides the enthusiastic child with her right may represent a better fortune. But Tenniel insists that the grip of the dark figure is strong and unrelenting. We are still, after all, in The Hungry Forties, that terrible decade of poor harvests, high-priced bread, and the Irish Famine.
Dickens, Charles. The Haunted Man; or, The Ghost's Bargain. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. Engraved by Martin & Corbould, T. Williams, Smith & Chellnam, and Dalziel. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848.
_______. The Haunted Man. Illustrated by John Leech, Frank Stone, John Tenniel, and Clarkson Stanfield. (1848). Rpt. in Charles Dickens's Christmas Books, ed. Michael Slater. 2 vols. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, rpt. 1978. II, 235-362, 365-366.
Glancy, Ruth. "Dickens at Work on The Haunted Man." Dickens Studies Annual 15 (1986): 65-85.
Patten, Robert. Charles Dickens and His Publishers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978.
Patten, Robert L. Chapter 10, "Bargain Haunters." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 234-275. [Review]
Solberg, Sarah. "'Text Dropped into the Woodcuts': Dickens's Christmas Books." Dickens Studies Annual 8 (1980): 103-118.
Created 19 October 2004
Last modified 4 June 2024