‘Phiz' [Hablot Knight Browne] 42 original drawings for Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit

Dickens once complained: "I build up temples in my mind that are not made with hands (or expressed with pen and ink, I am afraid)." In an effort to realise these ‘temples’, Dickens was intensely involved with fine-tuning the relationship of his text with almost all of the nine hundred or so original illustrations which were produced over his career. Little Dorrit was no exception: “Traveling restlessly back and forth between London and France, Dickens began writing to Browne at length about his forthcoming narrative; hearing nothing about or from him, the anxious author demanded that Bradbury and Evans send Browne his Paris address and communicate with his partner, Mr. Young, about the artist's whereabouts.” 

This strained collaborative process, and the struggle to marry text with image, is evident in the original illustrations themselves, which we are proud to offer in our September Books sale. For example, Dickens objected strongly to Browne's sketch of the character Mr Dorrit, captured just before his unexpected after-dinner speech: "He is described in the text as 'shedding tears' and what he imperatively wants is an expression doing less violence in the reader's mind to what is going to happen to him, and much more in accordance with that serious end which is so close before him. Pray do not neglect this change." Thus, Browne’s final published version sees the former debtor, strained by conflicting emotions, make a pathetic figure. His melancholic expression is clearly at odds with the drawing offered in the present collection.

xxxv) ‘An Unexpected After Dinner Speech’, pencil and wash, 108 x 178mm

Published version (1857)

A more obvious example of artistic draft and revision is the alternative, unused version of ‘Mr. Flintwinch has a Mild Attack of Irritability’, offered here alongside the sketch used for the published version. From a more distant and impersonal viewpoint, its effect would have been a much darker and more sinister scene.

xx) ‘Mr. Flintwinch has a Mild Attack of Irritability’, charcoal and wash, titled by ‘Phiz’, 173 x 129mm

xxi) An alternative, unused version of the preceding subject, pencil and charcoal, horizontal crease at top, small tear, 144 x 93mm

The sketches offer a unique opportunity to own a physical record of the often turbulent processes involved in illustrating one of Charles Dickens’ best-loved works, and are works of art in their own right. 

Bibliography: Cohen (Jane R.) Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators (1980).

Offered in Chiswick Auctions’ next Books & Works on Paper sale, on the 30th of September, are a series of 42 original drawings for Little Dorrit by ‘Phiz’ [Hablot Knight Browne (1815-1882)], Dickens’s principal illustrator. These comprise preparatory designs for the cover, frontispiece, title-page and thirty-three of thirty-eight plates, together with an alternative version of one plate and five drawings copied by the artist from the etchings to complete the set. Included with the series is a first edition, bound from the original parts, and an autograph letter (dated 15 May 1878) from the artist to an unidentified collector stating that ‘the sketches which you have are the originals from which I executed my etchings for “Little Dorritt” [sic].

Estimate: £25,000 - 35,000