When Is a Book Not a Book? Oliver Twist in Context

The New York Public Library, Berg Collection of English and American Literature

On this pencil, pen, and watercolor sketch of Nancy fainting, someone—possibly the copperplate engraver Becker, who engraved the captions for the plates—has penciled two alternative titles. George Cruikshank often sent Charles Dickens suggestions for captions, emphasizing in the variants different moments or characters within the scene, but Dickens was the final authority for each title. Thus, picture and caption both indicate the ways in which the author and the artist understood the events they were describing.

Back