The New York Public Library, Berg Collection of
English and American Literature
Master Harry Burnett.
The son of the novelist's eldest sister, Fanny Burnett, Harry is said to be the original of both Tiny Tim and Paul Dombey. He died in January 1849, only a few months after his mother's early death. "Harry was a singular child," Fanny's pastor
recalled, "meditative and quaint in a singular degree." This haunting photograph of Dickens's frail little nephew was once the property of Elizabeth Dickens, the mother of the novelist.