Title Page

John Tenniel

1848

Dickens's The Haunted Man

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Tenniel's second plate for Charles Dickens's The Haunted Man (1848), the title-page, is again a full page, but has ornate text surrounding its circular vignette. The female angel with long hair who appears twice on the left-hand register of the wreath in the Frontispiece points the way with her right hand as she takes the right hand of the child with her left. Continuing the right/left symbolism, Tenniel has the dark hooded figure (so reminiscent of the "Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come" in A Christmas Carol) hold the child's left hand. Again, the wreath motif is the unifying structural device, but occasionally these thorns bear a rose and leaves, unlike those in the Frontispiece. Thus, Tenniel's introductory plates make plain the nature of the allegory that the text will present: an acceptance of our lives, past and present, rose and thorn, painful and happy, is necessary for psychological integration and spiritual salvation.