A Handful of Cards for all Lovers of the Works of Charles Dickens

Book Description

1920. A Unique SetFifty Dickensian “Playing Cards” by KydKYD (pseudonym of Joseph Clayton Clarke). [DICKENS, Charles]. A Handful of Cards for all Lovers of the Works of Charles Dickens. A series of fifty original designs by “Kyd.” [N.p.: n.d., ca. 1920's].Fifty-one original pen, ink and watercolor drawings (image size: 3 1/8 x 2 1/2 inches; 91 x 65 mm.) on separate sheets watermarked "Reeves Greyhound Water Colour Paper England", (leaf size 10 3/8 x 6 7/8 inches (264 x 174 mm) including fifty “playing card” drawings and a pictorial title-page. Each drawing is signed by “Kyd” within a colored wash border and includes captions identifying the characters and novels; each “playing card” contains portraits of four different Dickensian characters (thus representing 200 characters in all), each represented as the Ace, King, Queen, or Jack of a given suit. Bound for Chas. J. Sawyer ca. 1925 in full green crushed levant morocco. Gilt ruled borders. Five raised bands with black rules. Six gilt ruled and lettered compartments. Gilt lettering to upper cover. In the original leather edged slipcase. Spine sunned by a degree. Otherwise, fine.The fifty drawings include four groups of characters from Bleak House, four from Dombey and Son, one from Edwin Drood, one from The Chimes, two from Barnaby Rudge, one from The Cricket on the Hearth, one from A Christmas Carol, four from David Copperfield, two from Sketches by Boz, three from Little Dorrit, three from Our Mutual Friend, one from Hard Times, four from Nicholas Nickleby, two from Great Expectations, four from The Pickwick Papers, three from Martin Chuzzlewit, four from Oliver Twist, four from The Old Curiosity Shop, and two from A Tale of Two Cities. "Among other more unusual works [by Kyd] was the design for a set of playing cards offered for sale in the auction of the A. Edward Newton Collection in 1941. Described as a 'unique set,' the collection consisted of 55 pieces, including a frontispiece, back and Joker. Some 225 Dickens characters are introduced on the pips of the cards, and the court cards contain a double bust portrait of outstanding characters. The lot was accompanied by a letter, dated May 20, 1931, in which the artist wrote: '…the 55 drawings which I submitted to you, designed for a set of playing cards, are my original work (only recently completed) and the only set of Dickens Playing Cards in existence…I am now in my 75th year…the odds against my ever doing a similar set…must be several million to one.' While admiring the idea behind these designs, the claim by 'Kyd' that this was the only set which he produced must be queried. A similar set was offered in Chas. J. Sawyer's catalogue No. 103 in 1931 (Plate 2). The purchaser was not Mr. Newton and according to the catalogue no letter accompanied the set. There is a feeling amongst the older members of the book trade that at least five sets were executed" (Sawyer, Richard. "Kyd" (Joseph Clayton Clark): A Preliminary Study of his Life and Work Together with an Essay on Fore-Edge Paintings, 1980. p. 8).This is one of those presumed five sets, though it should be noted that the playing card design illustrated on Plate 2 of Sawyer's essay on Kyd is not found within the present copy, to this set's credit: the designs here are of much finer line, quality, delicacy, and refinement. That set, offered in Sawyer's catalogue 103, was bought by Mrs. Marjorie Wiggin Prescott, was issued as a commercial deck by The Navarre Society in the 1980s, and does not resemble the designs found here in any way. On the front free end paper, a penciled note from a prior owner reads: " CJS/Sept 44;" this copy apparently bought from Charles J. Sawyer's shop in 1944, where, apparently, all of these sets passed through (it has been suggested that Chas. J. Sawyer commissioned them from Kyd), each differing from one another, and from the Newton copy.Joseph Clayton Clark (1856-1937) worked as a freelance artist with a particular affection for Dickens, his Dickens illustrations first appearing in 1887 in Fleet Street Magazine, with two collections soon to follow: The Characters of Charles Dickens (1889) and Some Well Known Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens (1892). In the first decade of the twentieth century, five sets of postcards based on his Dickens drawings were published, and seven sets of non-Dickensian comic cards by him were issued. Beginning in the 1920s, he earned his living from watercolor sketches, mainly of Dickens' characters, which he sold to and through the London book trade. Frederic G. Kitton gives him early notice in his classic text, Dickens and His Illustrators (1890); Kyd's watercolors were at that date already being avidly bought by major Dickens collectors (Kitton, p. 233), the Cosens sale in 1890 successfully selling a collection of 241 of Kyd's Dickens watercolors, and Mr. Tom Wilson, at the time the foremost collector of Dickens, possessing 331 of Kyd's drawings. The British Museum has a collection of 598 drawings and paintings of the artist's Dickens work, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dickens House in London, and the University of Texas at Austin each have significant collections of Kyd.

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