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Showing posts from August, 2012

A Communard in Dickensian London: Auguste Lancon

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In 1986 I edited, with my friend Victor E. Neuburg, a collection of Charles Dickens's social criticism, under the title A December Vision . One of the pleasures of that project was researching visual images to match Dickens's texts on London's workhouses, prisons, and ragged schools. Illustrators such as George Cruickshank, Phiz, Watts Phillips, W.G. Mason, Kenny Meadows, William M'Connell, A. Henning, and various Punch cartoonists, enlivened the pages, along with work by two French artists, Gustave Dor� and Gavarni. But I don't recall ever coming across the searing etchings of Auguste Lan�on, created around 1880 to accompany the text La Rue � Londres by his friend Jules Vall�s, published in 1884. It's a shame as many of them perfectly illustrate the scenes of poverty and desperation that so strongly roused Dickens's sense of injustice and inequality. Auguste Lan�on, Un abreuvoir dans Tottenham-Court-Road Etching, 1884 Auguste Lan�on, Une ruelle dans Spita