The New York Public Library, Berg Collection of
English and American Literature
A plate from Alfred Crowquill's Pictures Picked from the Pickwick Papers.
After Robert Seymour's suicide, the English comic illustrator, caricaturist, and writer Alfred Crowquill (the pen-name of Alfred Henry Forrester) competed for the plum assignment as illustrator of The Pickwick Papers, but lost out to Hablot K. Browne. Undeterred, he issued his own Pictures Picked from the Pickwick Papers, 40 color lithographs in 10 parts, between May 1 and November 9, 1837. Altogether the plates comprise nearly 200 Pickwickian scenes and character sketches, all drawn with Crowquill's customary fanciful finesse.