The Pontifex Collection

We are pleased to announce that the cataloguing of the Pontifex collection has been completed.

The book titles are now available to view on the University of Cambridge’s online library catalogue, ‘idiscover’. Geoffrey Knight Dalton Pontifex (1903-1982), alumnus of Magdalene College Cambridge, donated a number of books from his collection to the Old Library. The majority of the books are first editions of the works of Charles Dickens, which were originally bought by Geoffrey’s father Reginald (1857-1951), a barrister and alumnus of Magdalen College Oxford. 

Cataloguing the collection allows a close study of each book, and below is a selection of interesting items discovered during this process.

Many of Dickens’s works were issued in installments in periodicals before being released as complete books. The Pontifex copy of Little Dorrit includes one of the original blue paper periodical covers from an installment of novel, which was published between 1855 and 1857.  This paper cover offers a glimpse into the story’s original publication format and distribution.  By releasing the novel a few chapters at a time, Dickens made his work more accessible to a wider audience, as readers could pay in small installments.  Publishing the novel in ‘serial’ form was also a commercial opportunity, as Prof J.J. Brattin explains: “Publishers, too, liked the idea, as it allowed them to increase sales and to offer advertisements in the serial parts. And Dickens enjoyed the intimacy with his audience that serialization provided.”[i]

The Pontifex copy of Oliver Twist has duplicate illustrations – one set in the original black and white, the other with a colour tint.

This offers an unusual opportunity to closely compare the visual impact of each.  This illustration, ‘Oliver amazed at the Dodger’s mode of “going to work”’ not only depicts the artful dodger’s famous pickpocketing skills, but also illustrates a typical London book stall of the mid-19th century. 

The illustrations throughout this edition are by George Cruickshank.  Cruickshank (1792-1878) was the leading cartoonist and caricaturist of his time, and his involvement with the Oliver Twist story is the subject of much intrigue.  The cartoonist claimed, a year after Dickens’s death, that he came up with the idea for the novel.  In an article for History Today about Dickens illustrators, Mark Bryant writes: ‘Henry James remarked of Oliver Twist that certain memorable illustrations made the book seem “more Cruikshank’s than Dickens’…” and as early as April 1840 Thackeray said in Fraser’s Magazine that ‘the artist wanted the attractive subject of a boy growing up from the meagre poverty of workhouse childhood to the graceful beauty of happy youth, and the letterpress was written “to match, as per order”’.[ii]

One of Dickens’s lesser-known stories, The Magic Fishbone, is the second of a set of four children’s stories known as the ‘Holiday Romance’ series. 

They were published in Our Young Folks in 1868, and American children’s periodical, as well as the British periodical All the Year Round.

Each of the stories is narrated from a child’s perspective, with The Magic Fishbone being ‘from the pen of Miss Alice Rainbird aged 7’. This early 20th-century edition of The Magic Fishbone contains the work of children’s book illustrator Susan Beatrice Pearse (1878-1980), as shown above: ‘The Queen came in most splendidly dressed’.

By Catherine Sutherland
Special Collections Librarian

All images used in this blog are the copyright of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College Cambridge. To reproduce these images in any format, including online, permission from the College must be sought.

References

[i] Dickens Portal – WPI Digital Exhibits. (2024). Project Boz. [online] Available at https://exhibits.wpi.edu/spotlight/dickens-portal/feature/project-boz [Accessed 21 Jan. 2025].

[ii] Historytoday.com. (2025). Dickens: a Debt to Cartoons | History Today. [online] Available at: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/dickens-debt-cartoons [Accessed 21 Jan. 2025].