The New York Public Library, Berg Collection of
English and American Literature
Dickens by Gurney, No. 1.
Soon after his arrival in New York in early December, Dickens spent a day posing for a series of portraits at the studio of Jeremiah Gurney, then located at 707 Broadway, between Washington Place and West Fourth Street; and while he had sworn he would
never again sit for a photographer, he was very pleased with the results. The New York Times
approved as well; on Christmas Eve its "Fine Arts" column noted that "in variety and finish, in
artistic arrangement of light and shade, and in beauty of mechanical execution," the Gurney
portraits were the best they had seen of the great English novelist.