Books

First edition, bound from the original monthly parts, in a particularly elegant contemporary binding. Martin Chuzzlewit is placed by Dickens's biographer Peter Ackroyd as marking "a great change in Dickens's conception of moral characteristics... For the first time Dickens begins to explore the contradictions and difficulties of the contemporary human world; these are no longer figures defined by a single characteristic or animated by the wilful principle of a 'humour', but ones who are seen to change with the changing world, to live and grow" (Ackroyd, p. 392). Dickens wrote to John Forster on 2 November 1843 that "I think Chuzzlewit is a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories" (Pilgrim, Letters, III, pp. 590). Octavo (216 x 132 mm). Contemporary green morocco, spine lettered in gilt within ornamental floral cartouche, covers elaborately panelled in gilt, gilt turn-ins, yellow endpapers, gilt edges. Engraved frontispiece and vignette title page (£ sign transposed, no priority), 38 plates, by H. K. Browne (Phiz). Bound without half-title. Dickens centenary tribute stamp to front pastedown alongside late 19th-century ownership stamp of Alexander Smith Esq., faded pencilled jotting to front free endpaper, ownership inscription dated 1877 to initial binder's blank, alongside neat ownership signature of E. J. Smith. Morocco slightly darkened, binding firm, joints and extremities neatly restored, browning to plates, plate facing p. 521 with 7 cm closed tear repaired on verso, slight loss at head of pp. 303-6 not affecting text. A very good copy. Kremers pp. 79-82, 288; Smith I.7. Peter Ackroyd, Dickens, 1990.