Details
[DICKENS, CHARLES]. BROWNE, HABLOT K. ("Phiz"). Original pen-and-ink drawing/design for the front wrapper of Part 1 of the monthly parts issue of the Household Edition of The Works of...Dickens, published in London by Chapman & Hall in 101 parts from July 1871 to January 1880, 9½ x 6¾in, 240 x 170mm., on green paper, a few small spots, signed "Phiz," tipped to a copy of Dickens's The Uncommercial Traveller, London: Chapman and Hall, [ca. 1877], 4to, original pictorial green cloth, a volume in the Household Edition, with 26 illustrations by Edward Gurden Dalziel.
The Hablot K. Browne drawing, showing various Dickens characters plus the lettering within a rustic border, was probably a trial design for the monthly parts issue. Laid in is a 1953 letter from Laurie E Deval of Elkin Mathews to a E.M. Cockburn, who had just purchased the drawing from them: "...Kitton's Charles Dickens and his Illustrators includes the wrapper for the Household Edition, used in an adapted from as a title for the book. Curiously enough although this wrapper is clearly based on the drawing by Phiz which you now possess, the block was made from a revised design made by Gorden Thomson and no acknowledgement of Phiz's part in it appears..." Also laid in is a reproduction of the drawing from an Elkin Matthews catalogue on which Deval and Cockburn have identified the characters.
The Hablot K. Browne drawing, showing various Dickens characters plus the lettering within a rustic border, was probably a trial design for the monthly parts issue. Laid in is a 1953 letter from Laurie E Deval of Elkin Mathews to a E.M. Cockburn, who had just purchased the drawing from them: "...Kitton's Charles Dickens and his Illustrators includes the wrapper for the Household Edition, used in an adapted from as a title for the book. Curiously enough although this wrapper is clearly based on the drawing by Phiz which you now possess, the block was made from a revised design made by Gorden Thomson and no acknowledgement of Phiz's part in it appears..." Also laid in is a reproduction of the drawing from an Elkin Matthews catalogue on which Deval and Cockburn have identified the characters.
Provenance
George Dalziel, signature on title-page, bookplate;
E.M. Cockburn, purchased from Elkin Mathews in 1953.
E.M. Cockburn, purchased from Elkin Mathews in 1953.