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First edition, exceedingly rare prepublication presentation copy, inscribed by Dickens on the half-title to his friend and son's godfather, "Walter Savage Landor from his affectionate friend Charles Dickens, Seventeenth December 1843." This is one of the few known copies inscribed two days before the book's official publication, the earliest date Dickens signed copies of his most popular and enduring work. Advertisements in the Athenaeum and Publisher's Circular on 16 and 15 December, respectively, announced the publication of A Christmas Carol on the 19th of that month, a date verified by affidavits filed in an 1844 suit brought against the publisher of a pirated issue. A census by Calhoun and Heaney identified only ten prepublication presentation copies: eight inscribed on 17 December and two the following day. The other earliest recipients were Mrs Eliza Touchet, Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Albany Fonblanque, Samuel Rogers, Revd Edward Tagart, Thomas Noon Talfourd, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Carlyle (inscribed on the 18th), and John Forster (also the 18th), all significant names in Dickens's circle at that time. Post-publication dated inscriptions are known until the 22nd, and other copies are undated. The next earliest dated copies are inscribed "New Years Day 1844." The copy has all the required points of first issue, first state: Stave I in first chapter in first chapter heading; perfect signature letter C on the direction line; the text uncorrected; and a 14mm interval between the blind-stamping of the left margin of the cover and the left extremity of the gilt wreath (Todd's first impression, first issue). Walter Savage Landor was a poet, historical novelist, and political activist. His series Imaginary Conversations (1824-9) proved popular with readers, though he was equally celebrated for his lively personality. Landor – who greatly influenced the following generation of writers and social reformers – was one of the eminent Victorians Dickens endeavoured to subsume into his circle by naming his second son after him (the eldest having naturally been christened Charles Dickens, Jr.). Dickens initially considered naming his fourth child "Edgar" ("a good honest Saxon name, I think"), but in a matter of days, he called upon Landor to serve as the infant's godfather. Dickens held that "to give [his son] a name to be proud of was to give him also another reason for doing nothing unworthy or untrue when he came to be a man" (Forster, Dickens, I: 250). Walter Landor Dickens was baptized on 4 December 1841, at St Marylebone Parish Church. Landor remained a constant presence in Dickens's life, inspiring the character of Lawrence Boythorn in Bleak House. Boythorn, with his booming manner and penchant for superlatives, may be prone to hyperbole, but his goodness is unwavering. '"I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn,"' Mr. Jarndyce, one of the central characters of Bleak House – and arguably the one most closely aligned with Dickens himself – remarks. "'He was then the most impetuous boy in the world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow'" (Dickens, Bleak House, Chapter IX). While the admiration Dickens felt for Landor is irrefutable, the latter's feelings were hardly less fervent. In an April 1839 letter to John Forster, Landor asked him to pass along a message to Dickens: "Tell him he has drawn from me more tears and more smiles than are remaining to me for all the rest of the world, real or ideal" (Forster, Landor, I: 409). Dickens's and Landor's admiration for one another lasted throughout their lives. In a letter sent to John Forster on 9 May 1864, Landor wrote: "My dear Forster, this is the last letter I shall ever write to anybody. My kind friends Mr. Twisleton will carry it, with my others last received, to England with him. My love to noble Dickens, with, to yourself, your ever affectionate W. Landor" (Forster, Landor, I:541). In September 1864, Landor died quietly in Florence and was buried near his friend, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Shortly after Landor's death, Dickens wrote to Forster from Bath, a city Landor spent a significant amount of time in and where Dickens had visited him: "Landor's ghost goes along the silent streets here before me. … The place looks to me like a cemetery which the Dead have succeeded in rising and taking. Having built streets, of their old gravestones, they wander about scantly trying to 'look alive.' A dead failure" (Forster, Dickens, III:452). His godson and namesake Walter Landor Dickens had died at the age of 22 of an aortic aneurism on 31 December 1863, while serving as a lieutenant in the 26th Native Infantry Regiment in Calcutta. He was buried in the Bhowanipore Cemetery, Calcutta. In April 1987, students from Jadavpur University collected funds to restore and move his headstone to the South Park Street Cemetery, positioning it among other memorials for literary, cultural, and historical European figures who died in India during the colonial period. READ MORE Small octavo. Original red-brown vertically-ribbed cloth, spine with gilt ornament and lettering, covers stamped in blind with single line and decorative border of holly and ivy, front cover stamped in gilt with titling within wreath, pale yellow endpapers, gilt edges. Housed in a custom green morocco pull-off case by Riviere & Son. Frontispiece, 3 plates, by John Leech, all hand-coloured as issued; 4 woodcut illustrations in the text. Title page printed in red and blue. St Austell Hall bookplate of John Gribbel (1858-1936), his sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 8 Dec. 1947, lot 145. Spine a touch faded, corners very gently bumped, scattering of tiny spots, still a fine copy. Smith II, pp. 19-29; William B. Todd, "Note 170: Dickens's Christmas Carol", Book Collector, 1961. Calhoun & Heaney, "Dickens' Christmas Carol After a Hundred Years: A Study in Bibliographical Evidence"; John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, 1875; Jo

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens. It was first published by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a grumpy, greedy, and cold-hearted old miser who is transformed into a kind, generous man after visits by the ghost of his former business partner and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.