ABSTRACT
The forty illustrations to Our Mutual Friend are by Marcus Stone. Marcus Stone was the son of Dickens's old friend Frank Stone. Frank Stone died in 1 859, leaving Marcus dependent on his own efforts for support. Dickens immediately interested himself on behalf of Marcus: a letter to the publisher Thomas Longman recommends him as 'an admirable draughtsman' who wished 'to make an additional opening for himself in the illustration of books' (Nonesuch 3 . 1 38) . Stone contributed illustrations to the Cornhi/1 Magazine, Good Words and other periodicals. His major work as an illustrator, apart from that for Dickens, was on Trollope's He Knew He Was Right. For Dickens he illustrated the 1 862 edition of AN and PI and the 1 863 edition of GE. His work on OMF and a number of successes at the Academy made his name and he enjoyed a moderately successful career as a painter of gracefully sentimental genre pictures. Once his reputation was established, he abandoned book illustration: 'Mr. Stone had recognized, what few will dispute, that his "forte" did not lie in illustrating' (Robinson, 1 869, 34 ).
