Charles Dickens

Dickens was concerned with improving social conditions and his books brought out to the public’s eye the horrific conditions of the times -- his chief instruments: a compelling narrative well-illustrated by some of Victorian’s finest artists of the times. Indeed, Dickens is considered as one of the foremost examples of a narrative prose writer who, with illustrations, placed Victorian readers in the modern movie theatre.

Dickens’ astute cinematic vision of realism developed from an acute sensitivity to the conditions of his times and his own personal experiences in a Victorian society that was in itself evolving.  Nancy Armstrong asserts the role of the writer to his public, and specifically as it relates to Dickens:

Critics generally attribute Dickens’ realism to his first-hand experience of reality itself – a boyhood stretch in the blacking factory, years as a reporter at criminal courts, a tormented sex life and an even unhappier marriage.  Realism invites us to assume that fiction mediates between such a person and his social environment.  Realism therefore asks us to believe that novels represent the author’s relationship to his or her time. (p. 131)

Indeed, Dickens painted pictures with words and in his “Mind’s eye” saw scenes in terms of illustrations.  But it was not Dickens who invented this unique creative technique, but he improved upon it.  With a keen sense of realism, then, dickens was able to work with a number of illustrators that helped his Victorian readers grasp the matters of his fiction, and paint for them scenes that “might have jumped out of the pages.” 

The subject of pictorial representations, then, whether it be cartoons, illustrations, or pictures, has had a fascinating history, and to an extent, various degrees of focus and interest throughout the centuries.  We have barely begun to understand how Paleolithic men took to the caves and dabbled in paint to their hearts’ content and were able to visually render the “mind’s eye” on cave walls.  Centuries later, medieval illustrated texts were the first attempts at combining the sister arts of text and illustration, but it was not until the Renaissance period that paintings and illustrations were perfected as a controlled and recognizable art forms.  However significant popularity was not reached until the Victorian era where illustrations were reproduced to great commercial success in order to enhance, clarify and make erudite fictional material, which gained considerable support from the reading public. Indeed, it was Dickens who successfully combined text with illustration, for it was Dickens who was commissioning illustrations for future episodes of his serialized books, scenes and chapters of which were yet un-penned.

For a clearer understanding of the origin and development of illustrations, it is first necessary to consider what exactly is an “image.”  Does an image actually exist, is a challenging question; towards this, there are two schools of thoughts about this process as pointed out by Punyashloke Mishra (quoted in Handa, p. 177) where “pictorial representation depends upon visual correspondence or ‘likeness’ with the object depicted” and “the advancement of picture ‘reading’ skills to the learning of pictorial conventions.”  The question then: does one first create a mental image from a store of “like” images embellished in the mind, or does one need to be schooled in the art of “recognizing” an image?  Derrida and Stiegler bring this to good conclusion with their comment that “the mental image is always the return of some image-object, its remanence [revenance] of the phantasm – an effect of its permanence” (p. 148). At the same time, what Keith Kenney applies to the cartoonist, works equally for the illustrator:

The cartoonist starts with the universe of discourse – oral, written and pictorial – from which he (again, cartoonists are usually male) selects a specific idea and then draws a visual sign to represent that idea.  The cartoonist attempts to compose into a single image the various streams of cultural consciousness from which he has drawn his idea.  Readers then are expected to unpack one or more layers of available cultural consciousness that the cartoon has evoked from them.

To a great extend Dickens then worked in reverse – he instructed and supervised his illustrators to produce “one or more layers of available cultural consciousness” into the illustrations, and then somehow “unpacked” the visuals of cultural consciousness into his narrative text.  Does illustration then interpret text or complement text?  In most cases, and especially in modern times, the creator of the illustration is not the author of the text but works under the guidance of someone who is in the process of rendering a visual image of the text. However, what if it is the author himself who directs this sequence of events?  -- And what if the author visualizes the illustration for the next sequence of events he is yet to compose?  Then, where does this “imagined” illustration come from? – Where does it reside?  In what form is it brought forth to paper?  For a clearer understanding of this solution, one must then turn to the cultural fabric of the Victorian period in which Dickens practiced his arts.

Obviously, at the forefront of this movement then, of blending text with illustration was none other than the prolific writer Charles Dickens who took it upon himself to make sure that his serialized stories (and books) were adequately illustrated, and it is he Dickens who holds the answers to the many questions of “creating the image.”  It could be said with great certainty that he was the father of the art of combining texts with illustrations --subsequently enhanced by the development of photography in 1839 -- and which today is an integral part encompassing many aspects of the term “multi-media” and yet in a sense, the stylistic blending of the sister arts of text and illustration.  Dickens’ role then is of great importance in understanding technological development, enhancement and solidification of text and illustration, and its impact on modern media culture.  These processes did not come about by chance, for Dickens was far ahead of his civilization, and he understood that the importance of non-verbal thinking cannot be underestimated, and it is at the root of man’s survival and the development of thought in man’s actions in most civilizations.  Dickens then drew from the past to fashion his future and set the visual parameters for illustrations for successive generations.  Indeed, throughout history, the need for and the demand for items necessary to sustain and enhance life called for the development of rudimentary tools for the creation of such necessities; the ability of early man to picture in his mind’s eye “form and function” led to the transformation of mind-pictures into practical and sustainable objects; each individual picture in the creator’s mind translates into precise approaches, tangible objects, and impressionistic attitudes.   Inventions fostered the Industrial revolution; Dickens fostered the creative imagination.  Indeed, Dickens took these ideals one step further: he created pictorial representations images, wrote the accompanying narrative, and thus schooled his Victorian countrymen into fostering social change.

Dickens’ illustrators were inspired by early painters, and illustrators themselves were first painters.  Eugene S. Ferguson in a ground-breaking article “The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology” traces the development of drawings and pictures of the Renaissance technologists and highlights “the graphic inventions, such as pictorial perspective, that have lent system and clarity to nonverbal thinking” (p. 827).  Mechanical drawings were the first renderings of the mind’s eye, starting with the early sketches of Leonardo da Vinci.  Verbal instructions then were rendered into text accompanied by drawings, and with the subsequent development of the printed book technology -- which led to the arrival of two new books every day for some fifty years -- the spread of knowledge, where thinking became quantifiable as both textual and graphical form, became predominant.

Velasquez painting Las Meninas is at the forefront of extended verbal narrative and might be considered the forerunner of Victorian illustration and subsequently later developing concepts of virtual reality for both painting and illustration create an extension of text and in a sense are depictions of virtual realities.  Julia Thomas in her book Pictorial Victorians makes this connection between paintings and illustrations where “in the case of illustrations and narrative paintings, this was intensified by the fact that throughout the period it was painters themselves who illustrated texts” (p. 3).  At the forefront of this movement was the painter-illustrator Hogarth who may have set the stage for this movement from painting to illustration and did have a direct influence on one of Dickens’s illustrators Cruikshank.  Robert L Patten highlights this connection in his analysis of the origins of Oliver Twist:

George Cruikshank, may indeed, as he later said, have suggested to Dickens that they collaborate on a story about the rise of "a boy from a most humble position up to a high and respectable one." For 15 years, Cruikshank had wanted to illustrate a contemporary version of William Hogarth's narrative series of 12 pictures, Industry and Idleness. Hogarth's pictures track the parallel but contrasted fortunes of two apprentices: one, Francis Goodchild, through industry rises to "a high and respectable" position as Lord Mayor of London, while the other, Tom Idle, through idleness falls into bad company. Idle is eventually sentenced by his former fellow apprentice Goodchild and hanged on Tyburn Hill. A successful recent exhibition of Hogarth's work had made such a project more viable.

Hogarth's creative imagination in his paintings and illustrations did then have a direct bearing on Dickens visions of depicting realism in his illustrative texts.

Yet another compelling factor that led to the success of Dickens’ works was the Victorian’s compulsiveness with the art of observations: of simply watching things, of creating gadgets and gadgetry in aid in closer observation of things.  As more printed material became available, which generated more readership, the Victorian public began to develop an insatiable apetite to see not only text in print but images – which led directly to the development of illustrated advertisement for the newspapers and magazines of the times.  Adds in turn, attracted more interest in the inventions of the period.  People not only wanted to hear of things, but to see things, and eventually to take ownership.  Kate Flint in The Victorians and the Visual Imagination  writes:

Foucault’s theories have proved to be enormously influential with interpreters of Victorian culture since the mid-1980s, many of whom have followed his line that to make something visible is to gain not just an understanding of it, but control over it.  This process has been repeatedly located within Victorian practice themselves – practices both material and linguistic – with their presume drive towards exposure, towards bringing things to the surface, towards making things available to the eye and hence ready for interpretation.  (pp. 7-8)

Dickens’ novels are ripe with instances of “people watching people.”  Christ and Jordan astutely point to this in their remark that “Dickens’s narration regularly turns readers into watchers of characters watching one another watching, often watching one another’s reflections,” and they go on to quote instances from Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend as these stories appeared in serial form.  What then were these serials that commanded so much attention? The first to appear was The Penny Magazine in 1832.  The most significant of these magazines is the Penny Illustrated magazine where began “the partnership of the textual and pictorial line” (Curtis, quoted in Christ and Jordan, p. 29).  One notable magazine Punch carried many of Dickens’ text and commissioned illustrations.

The Victorian obsession with watching ultimately led to the perfection of illustrations. Rudimentary line drawings were perfected and used as illustrations in weekly magazines and books. Gerard Curtis points out: “Three cultural elements on which Charles Dickens, and his publishers, avidly capitalized were intrinsic to this process: the Victorian emphasis on the role of observation or ‘the art of seeing’, the ‘sister-arts’ tradition and the increasing importance of portraiture” (p. 3). Notable characters sitting for portraits appeared in several of dickens’ novels: Mr. Dorrit in Little Dorrit, Oliver’s lineage is established in Oliver Twist, the animated likeness of the Deadlock mansion in Bleak House and that of Rosa Bud in Edwin Drood.  The public then was able to relate directly to central happenings in the works of fiction, which greatly led to credibility of events.  Indeed, the Victorian era produced a number of astounding optical gadgets and instruments, which soon appeared in various forms in many of Dickens’ stories.

Therefore, as various medium for creating illustrations developed and were improved upon, the role of the reading population in supporting such ventures by buying serial publications was astounding; books were available, but serials cost less than books.  The literate population did dramatically increase in England after around 1830; the middle class and lower class became avid book collectors and readers, made especially so by the availability and popularity of various reading materials, and represented, according to scholar John Harvey, “a public which did not easily imagine what it read.”  Political positions were not now only available to the aristocrats but to the other classes as well, which led to a keen interest in reformation of the horrid conditions Dickens wrote about in his books.  Then, narrative that was well-illustrated avidly captured public imagination, curiosity and ultimate concern for improvements.According to information in an article in Victorian Illustrated Fiction  Illustrations were also a useful aid to readers of serialized novels—which often appeared in periodicals pitched to the middle classes—to help them recall what had already transpired. Many popular novels of the nineteenth century originally appeared in serial form. In addition, illustrations were an effective marketing tool.

Throughout his career, Dickens worked closely with some fifteen or more illustrators.

Yet another factor that fostered the availability of reading material was Royal support which directly led to the popularity of newspapers and periodicals. These printed materials were ripe with advertisements which not only enticed readers with fanciful dramas but also attracted their interest in a wide variety of business opportunities, inventions and entertainment offerings which could be obtained almost instantaneously.

Dickens was actively engaged in promoting his publications, and since illustrations sold publications, Dickens championed both causes: text and illustration, and worked closely with his illustrators and publishers. David Perdue points how Dickens “Dickens briefed the illustrator on plans for each month's installment so that work on the two illustrations could begin before he wrote them.”  From the examples provided (Appendix A: Developing Themes: Text-Culture-Illustration), one can readily see how the prolific Charles Dickens actively worked with his illustrators.

Dickens produced a significant number of fictional works throughout his lifetime, and worked with a great number of illustrators.  Indeed, the man with the “mind’s eye” not only saw, with great alarm, the evils of his time, but tailored his writings to alert the readers of his times of dangers that lie ahead.  Dickens’ own family experiences served him as bitter lessons, and one he never ceased to give up on championing the cause of the poor and neglected.  The influence of the man who could eloquently write distinctive yet visual stories, and actively solicit the visual imagination of his readers, has made a lasting impression on readers of all ages and times.