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20. The Personal History Of David Copperfield DICKENS, Charles
Bradbury & Evans, 1850. First edition. First state of vignette title page (dated). Publish- er’s primary binding of sage green cloth stamped in blind with ruled border and central arabesque to covers and lettered in gilt on the spine. Thirty nine full page steel engrav- ings by H. K. Browne. A very good copy indeed with the spine slightly faded and dusty and a few trivial marks, but the cloth entirely without repair. Internally, generally very fresh with minor, superficial repair to the hinges, pronounced foxing to the frontispiece and engraved title, but the remainder of the plates, for the most part, notably clean. An exceptionally well preserved copy. [40855] £15,000 David Copperfield, described by Dickens as “my favourite child”, marks a step change in the author’s career, a transition from composer of popular, picaresque, comedies to great novelist. It now ranks as one of the great novels of the nineteenth century. Sadleir listed it at the top of his list of comparative scarcities for Dickens in fine condition we have found it consistently the most difficult of Dickens’ major works to find in good unrepaired cloth. This is due in part to its shape and size. Like all of Dickens’s octavo novels, the contents were sim- ply too bulky for the flimsy binding. With Copperfield this issue was probably exacerbated by its popularity: the serialisation was an instant hit with the public and so when the completed novel was available it was read heavily or rebound for posterity. Smith 9
21. Bleak House DICKENS, Charles
Bradbury & Evans, 1853. First edition. Original publisher’s primary binding of olive green fine diaper cloth blocked in blind with border and central arabesque to covers and titles blocked in gilt to the spine. Engraved title and 39 full page steel engraved plates by H.K. Browne. A near fine copy, with almost inevitable toning to the spine but otherwise very bright and crisp and free from any repair. Internally, unusually clean, with no mentionable foxing only the most minor browning to the edges of the plates. Hinges tight, but starting. An exceptionally well preserved copy. [41758] £12,500 Critically regarded as one of Dickens’s most accomplished novels, Bleak House is notable for its complex plot structure and for the large and diverse range of characters it introduces. It also contains elements of crime fiction and is the first significant novel in which a detective plays an important role. Its satire of the Chancery court system remains one of the greatest passages on the English legal system in literary history. “Bleak House is not certainly Dickens’s best book; but perhaps it is his best novel” - G.K. Ches- terton Dickens’s octavo novels have rarely survived in good unprepared cloth, however, possibly as a consequence of its immediate popularity, copies of Bleak House seem particularly uncommon. Smith I 10
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