Product Description
Harry Furniss (18541925) was a well known if somewhat abrasive figure in English literary, artistic and political circles during the half century either side of 1900. In March 1905, at the invitation of the Dickens Fellowship, he delivered in Londons Memorial Hall a platform lecture on Dickens and his illustrators, A Sketch of Boz, illuminated by some sixty magic lantern slides. Over the next two years Furniss toured the provinces with an enlarged version of this lecture. An Edwardians View of Dickens and His Illustrators is an edited and annotated transcription of the unpublished manuscript of this engaging lecture, together with the original illustrations, some of which are Furnisss own. Few complete texts of oral lectures have survived and, coming from the pen (and pencil) of a professional book illustrator and keen Dickensian, A Sketch of Boz is an important document in the culture of Edwardian England. Professor Corderys substantial introduction discusses how the lecture sheds light on a number of fields: Dickenss reputation and that of his illustrators in the early twentieth century; the cultural significance of the platform lecture; the changing style of illustration and caricature; the commercial and ideological exploitation of Dickens at the turn of the century. He includes nearly 200 annotations, and an appendix summarizes the main illustrators surveyed by Furniss







