The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club (Extra-Illustrated)
London: Chapman and Hall, 1837. First single-volume edition, mixed issue (with some first issue points and some later issue characteristics). Leather bound. xiv; 609pp. Octavo [23 cm] Rebound in later 3/4 leather with marbled paper over boards. New endpapers and endbands. This copy opens with the vignette title page. No frontispiece. With 74 illustrations. Light foxing to the plates and pages. Very occasionally the foxing is more pronounced, particularly to the plates. Plates darkened as well. Minor spots of abrasion to pp. 576 and 577, obscuring just a couple of words. Lacking the Buss plates opposite p. 69 and p. 74. Eckel, pp. 19-27. Smith I, 3.
With many of the internal flaws (General) and first issue points listed in Smith, with the exception of the following: P. 26- headline printed "Posthumous Papers Of" and "the" and "T" fully printed, however the "o" is damaged; signature "F" not obliterated; no quote mark or period at end of last line, p. 178; "considering" on p. 553; signature "E" present; "holding" p. 260; numbers in pagination at p. 276 all level. Item #71288
With illustrations by Robert Seymour and Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"). Also includes illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn. An extra-illustrated edition. The first novel by Charles Dickens, written when he was twenty-four. According to his bibliographer, John C. Eckel, "its publication placed the author on a solid foundation from which he was never removed... It is quite probable that only Shakespeare's Works, the Bible and perhaps the English Prayer Book, exceed 'Pickwick Papers' in circulation."
Price: $500.00