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Stock# 85839

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Charles Dickens

Title

Great Expectations

Publication Place / Date

London / 1861

Image Dimensions

5.25 x 8 inches (each volume)

Color

Condition

VG+

Stock# 85839

$ 25,000.00

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Description

First edition, first issue of the Victorian classic

London: Chapman and Hall, 1861.

After being published serially in All the Year Round, the first edition of Great Expectations was published as a 3-volume octavo, somewhat unusually for a Dickens work, but likely influenced by Charles Edward Mudie and intended mostly for a borrowing audience. Indeed, of the 1,000 first issues and 750 second issues printed, Mudie's Select Library purchased 1400 (Patten).

Issue points

Volumes I and II with all internal flaws per Smith.

Volume II without deterioration of type on pp. 46, 47, and 95 per Carter and Smith

Vol. III has both Sadleir copy issue points, per Smith: p. 103, missing 3 in page number and p. 193, missing "i" in "inflexible", but not the flaws on 236 (this does have period after headline) and 262 ("shackled" is spelled correctly).

Condition Description

Octavo. Three volumes, each in later full olive green levant morocco by Zaehnsdorf, sunned to brown on spines and extremities of covers, some discoloration to covers (as common in green morocco). Spine in six compartments separated by raised bands (gilt stamp to four compartments, gilt lettering to two, dated in gilt at foot). Original publisher's wavy-grain violet cloth backstrips (gilt-stamped and sunned to blue, some spotting) and covers (blindstamped, with fading and spotting) bound at front and rear. Double-fillet gilt rule to board edges (corners only lightly bumped). Top edges gilt. Floral dentelles on turn-ins (minor offsetting to facing endpapers). Gilt-signed by Zaehsdorf on front turn-in with their gilt exhibition stamp on rear pastedowns. Pictorial bookplates to front pastedowns. Printed on wove paper with endpapers of laid paper. Lacks catalog in Vol. 3 (per Smith, not all first editions were issued with one). [4], [1]-344; [2], [1]-351; [2], [1]-344. Housed in buckram slipcase.

Reference

Sadleir 688; Gimbel A146; Walter E. Smith I, 14; Patten, Robert L. "Charles Dickens and His Publishers." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.