posted on 03 Jul 2016

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens illustrated by Ronald Searle

It must be a daunting experience to find yourself commissioned to illustrate a classic Dickens tale like A Christmas Carol. Other great artists go before you, television and cinema has also had a crack at it and  you have to confront the fact that Dickens himself is such a solid, graphic writer that his prose is already very visual.

However, I was intrigued to discover when I was browsing for books in a second hand shop recently that the great Ronald Searle had also pitched into this territory back in the early 1960s. Searle’s interpretation is fascinating because it is rumbustious, irreverent, funny and yet somehow traditional and in keeping with what you might imagine to be Dickens’ dark humour.

Searle, who was born in 1920, was an illustrator, humourist, artist and satirist whose prolific output during the Sixties and Seventies helped to define those decades. His work is immediately identifiable without having a single characteristic style and although it was never as brutal as someone like Gerald Scarfe it still managed to hit its target with unerring accuracy.

He died in 2011 at the age of 91 and it is probably fair to say that his best years had been gone for a decade or two by this point. When it came to writing his obituary most of the column inches were given over to his most famous – and earliest – creation, the girls of St. Trinians. Alongside his later schoolboy reprobate, Molesworth, these drawings and stories were important in establishing Searle in the minds of the general public but also tended to overshadow the range of other work he produced.

These drawings for Dickens show how skilled Searle was at adapting his style to the book he was illustrating. His drawings are, like Dickens’ prose, slightly over-fussy and, like high-Victorian decorative arts, a little over-elaborate. The richness is, however, seductive. The colours are thrilling and the faces of the characters filled with personality and life.

This edition was published in 1961 by Perpetua and, sadly, isn’t easy to find in its first edition state for much under £30-£40. It does, however, make a fabulous addition to any collection of Dickens and is a must for those addicted to great illustrators. It’s perfect for an older child – so maybe it would make someone a great Christmas present?

 

Terry Potter

July 2016