Books

First edition in book form, in a handsome Bayntun-Rivière binding. Dickens had been catapulted to fame with the success of The Pickwick Papers, and to secure his next novel Chapman and Hall offered Dickens £150 a part, a sum ten times greater than that which he had received for Pickwick. It met with great public enthusiasm, which has continued unabated: Dickens's biographer Peter Ackroyd remarks that the novel "has some title to being the funniest novel Dickens ever wrote; it is perhaps the funniest novel in the English language" (p. 262). Octavo (224 x 138 mm). Early 20th-century red morocco by Bayntun-Rivière, spine lettered and decorated in floral gilt compartments, raised bands, portrait of the author to front cover and facsimile signature blocked to the rear in gilt, single gilt fillet to boards, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, binder's stamp to rear turn-in. Engraved portrait of Dickens by Finden after D. Maclise with facsimile signature and 39 plates by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz). Spine faintly sunned, very slight foxing to contents, a near-fine copy. Smith I.5. Peter Ackroyd, Dickens, 1990.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens's third novel. The lengthy work follows the life of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies.