Richard Doyle – illustratör

With illustrations by Edward Landseer, Daniel Maclise, Clarkson Stanfield, Frank Stone, Richard Doyle, John Leech and John Tenniel, and with a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.In these five long stories, written specifically for Christmas, Dickens combines his concern for social ills with the myths and memories of childhood and traditional seasonal lore.A Christmas Carol, the first of the selection, has become a touchstone of English festive fiction and an enduring favourite internationally. Repeatedly adapted, parodied, staged and filmed, this richly influential tale is powerfully vivid and moving.The other stories, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man, blend whimsy, sentiment, comedy, satire, the didactic and the fantastic, developing resourcefully the theme of individual and social regeneration.

The story of Jack, the intrepid boy whose courage and ingenuity defeated a host of many-headed giants, has been told to children for hundreds of years. In 1842, when he was just 18, Richard Doyle, whose natural talent for draftsmanship was matched by imaginative invention and a passion for legend and the grotesque, created a picture-book version of Jack the Giant Killer, with hand-written text and a watercolor within a pictorial border decorating every page. It has remained one of the most beloved versions of this timeless tale.In this new Everyman''s edition, Doyle''s vivid, wonderfully engaging illustrations have been enlarged and the text has been given greater legibility. It is a book that will satisfy both the child''s delight in scariness, wonder, and magic, and the collector''s pleasure in classic Victorian illustration.