page_title: Robert William Buss
section_title: The Pickwick Papers
hierarchical_section_title: Robert William Buss / The Pickwick Papers
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration by Robert William Buss for The Pickwick Papers
context_page_description: Robert William Buss was a Victorian artist, etcher and illustrator perhaps best known for his painting Dickens' Dream. He was the father of Frances Buss, a pioneer of girls' education.
context_section_description: Buss was commissioned by Dickens' publishers, Chapman and Hall, to provide two illustrations for The Pickwick Papers after the original illustrator, Robert Seymour, committed suicide. Buss immediately set aside his other work and prepared a dozen or so preliminary sketches for the novel, then in its second of twenty instalments. Five of these sketches are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. His drawings were regarded as adequate, but the process of etching on a steel plate was unfamiliar to him so he hired an expert etcher.
  Buss realised that the "free touch of an original work was entirely wanting", and that the printed images lifted from his plates seemed lifeless and uninspired. But, he concluded, "Time was up", and the unsatisfactory illustrations for part 3 had to be issued. The publishers summarily dismissed him, which worried Buss throughout the rest of his life. The commission went instead to Hablot Knight Browne, but Buss never held his dismissal against Dickens. Instead, Buss remained his lifelong admirer and went on to produce several painting celebrating the author's work, including the unfinished Dickens' Dream.
caption: Illustration for The Pickwick Papers (1837)
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