Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

As Christ­mas­time approach­es, few nov­el­ists come to mind as read­i­ly as Charles Dick­ens. This owes main­ly, of course, to A Christ­mas Car­ol, and even more so to its many adap­ta­tions, most of which draw inspi­ra­tion from not just its text but also its illus­tra­tions. That 1843 novel­la was just the first of five books he wrote with the hol­i­day as a theme, a series that also includes The Chimes, The Crick­et on the Hearth, The Bat­tle of Life, and The Haunt­ed Man and the Ghost’s Bar­gain. Each “includ­ed draw­ings he worked on with illus­tra­tors,” writes BBC News’ Tim Stokes, though “none of them dis­plays quite the icon­ic mer­ri­ment of his ini­tial Christ­mas cre­ation.”

“Any­one look­ing at the illus­tra­tions to the Christ­mas books after A Christ­mas Car­ol and expect­ing sim­i­lar images to Mr Fezzi­wig’s Ball is going to be dis­ap­point­ed,” Stokes quotes inde­pen­dent schol­ar Dr. Michael John Good­man as say­ing.

Pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned less with Christ­mas as a hol­i­day and more “with the spir­it of Christ­mas and its ideals of self­less­ness and for­give­ness, as well as being a voice for the poor and the needy,” Dick­ens “had to cre­ate some very dark sce­nar­ios to give this mes­sage pow­er and res­o­nance, and these can be seen in the illus­tra­tions.”

Good­man’s name may sound famil­iar to ded­i­cat­ed Open Cul­ture read­ers, since we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his online Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery, whose dig­i­tized art col­lec­tion has been grow­ing ever since. It now con­tains over 2,100 illus­tra­tions, includ­ing not just A Christ­mas Car­ol and all its suc­ces­sors, but all of Dick­ens’ books from his ear­ly col­lec­tion of obser­va­tion­al pieces Sketch­es by Boz to his final, incom­plete nov­el The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood. And those are just the orig­i­nals: every true Dick­ens enthu­si­ast soon­er or lat­er gets into the dif­fer­ences between the waves of edi­tions that have been pub­lished over the bet­ter part of two cen­turies.

The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery has entire sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the posthu­mous “House­hold Edi­tion,” which have even more art than the orig­i­nals; the lat­er “Library Edi­tion,” from 1910, fea­tur­ing the work of esteemed and pro­lif­ic illus­tra­tor Har­ry Fur­niss; and even the 1912 “Pears Edi­tion” of the Christ­mas books, put out by the epony­mous soap com­pa­ny in cel­e­bra­tion of the cen­te­nary of Dick­ens’ birth. But none of them quite matched the lav­ish­ness of that first Christ­mas Car­ol, on which Dick­ens had decid­ed to go all out: as Good­man writes, “it would have eight illus­tra­tions, four of which would be in col­or, and it would have gilt edges and col­ored end­pa­pers.” Alas, this extrav­a­gance “left Dick­ens with very lit­tle prof­it” — and with an unusu­al­ly prag­mat­ic but nev­er­the­less unfor­get­table Christ­mas les­son about keep­ing costs down. Enter the Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Pre­sent­ed in a Dig­i­tal Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.