Croydon's illustrious illustrators
Even if you don't know their names you'll recognise their work
Welcome back to Londonist: Croydon Edit. Piloted by Londonist editor and Croydonian Will Noble, it's about all things in the borough of Croydon. This edition is exclusively for paid subscribers.
Croydon has been called home by a handful of great writers, perhaps most famously, Arthur Conan Doyle, who based a few of his Sherlock Holmes stories in the area. But the area also has some illustrious illustrators to its name—working on multiple bestselling books, and crafting endearing pictures beloved by millions.
Phiz, aka Hablot Knight Browne
You may not recognise the name Phiz, and you probably won’t recognise that of Hablot Knight Browne. But you WILL have heard of the man he illustrated for: Charles Dickens. Phiz’s working relationship with Dickens began while the author was churning out The Pickwick Papers, and suddenly required a new illustrator after the original, Robert Seymour, committed suicide. Dickens whittled his replacement down to two: William Makepeace Thackeray and Phiz, the latter ultimately triumphing—although both went out to celebrate with beer and sausages. Phiz went on to illustrate a number of Dickens’ best-known works, including Bleak House and David Copperfield, which, as Inside Croydon points out, uses Browne’s local Thornton Heath church in an illustration titled “Our pew at church”. What’s with the ‘Phiz’ pseudonym you may well be asking by now? Originally, Browne went with Nemo, but abruptly changed it, apparently mirroring Dickens’ early pen name, Boz.
