So, Ronald Searle had an interesting take on illustrating the work of Charles Dickens, but I think his artwork is a lot of fun. Not the definitive versions, but a welcome breath of fresh air.
I started taking a closer look at his work because Darrell Van Citters mentioned in his book "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special" that Searle's illustrations from the 1961 edition of "A Christmas Carol" influenced some of the character designs in that special.
He specifically mentions the fiddler at Fezziwig's Christmas party:
You can definitely see that the fiddler from the special is a streamlined, UPA-ized version of the one from the book.
You can read more about this in this post from Darrell's blog:
He doesn't mention the "plunderers" but I think there are similarities there too. The cartoon version of Old Joe also has an eye patch and the characters in the book seem like they're doing a little dance number:
There's also a connection between Ronald Searle and another well-regarded version of "A Christmas Carol" (sort of):
Perhaps Searle's most famous work is his 1946-1952 British comic strip "St. Trinians's" which led to a series of movies. A couple of said movies featured Alastair Sim and George Cole, the respective old and young Scrooges of 1951's "Scrooge."
Kind of fun!
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