DICKENS, Charles; BROCK, C[harles] E[dmund], illustrator

[Christmas Books, The]

London: J .M. Dent & Co., 1905. Item #06138

Charles Dickens' Christmas Books
Illustrated by Charles Edmund Brock

DICKENS, Charles. BROCK, C.E., illustrator. Christmas Books. With Illustrations by C.E. Brock. London: J.M. Dent, 1905-1909.

Five small octavo volumes (7 x 4 1/2 inches; 178 x 114 mm.). With a total of forty color plates and forty-eight illustrations in the text by Charles Edmund Brock.

Full vellum, covers and spine elaborately decorated and lettered in gilt, top edge gilt, others uncut. Boards slightly splayed, otherwise a fine set. Bookplate of Ernest Gould Williams on front paste-down of first volume.

The titles:
A Christmas Carol
The Haunted Man
The Battle of Life
The Cricket on the Hearth
The Chimes

Following the overwhelming success of A Christmas Carol in 1843, Dickens embarked upon the Christmas Books project, seeking to marshal "the Carol philosophy ... in order to strike a sledgehammer blow" for England's lower classes. He continued publishing the Christmas Books throughout the 40s, and the stories became mainstays of Dickens's public reading tours of the 1850s and 1860s.

C[harles]. E[dmund]. Brock (1870-1938) was a widely published English line artist and book illustrator who earned his first book commission at age twenty. He became a very successful illustrator, best known for his line work, initially in the tradition of Hugh Thomson, but he was also a skilled colorist. Brock's work varied with the sort of story he was illustrating, some of it refined and described as "sensitive to the delicate, teacup-and-saucer primness and feminine outlook of the early Victorian novelists," while other work was "appreciative of the healthy, boisterous, thoroughly English characters," i.e. soldiers, rustics, and "horsey types." Other illustrations were grotesqueries drawn to amuse children looking at or reading storybooks.

Price: $1,950.00