'Grip the Raven'

The printed caption in the lower margin links this stuffed bird with Grip the Raven, a loquacious character in Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge. First serialised in 1841, the story was set during the Gordon Riots of 1780. But the bird in the novel was inspired by a real bird, a pet raven which Dickens had stuffed and mounted when it died - as a result of eating lead paint - in 1841. And once immortalised in print by Dickens, the fictionalised bird in Barnaby Rudge then in turn inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write his famous narrative poem The Raven. The original Grip now sits in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library.

Photographed by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.