7 First Issue Of Dickens’ Joseph Grimaldi Superbly Bound With Pictorial Morocco Inlays, With 12 Cruikshank Plates And 37 Additional Hand-Colored Plates 04DICKENS, Charles. Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. London, 1838. Two volumes. Octavo, later full red morocco gilt, front covers decorated with multi-color inlaid designs. $6700 First edition, first issue, beautifully bound by Bayntun in the Kelliegram style with pictorial multicolored morocco inlays on the front covers, with hand-colored frontispiece portrait and the 12 original Cruikshank plates, and extra-illustrated with 50 additional plates by Cruikshank and others. The front covers are decorated with multi-color pictorial inlaid designs of two characters. While Cruikshank’s illustrations “make those by ‘Phiz,’ the commonly acknowledged illustrator of Dickens, seem tame in conception and feeble in drawing… Cruikshank etched as Dickens wrote. Both were townsmen to the core and cockneys to their fingertips. London leaps to life through their art” (James, 29). First issue with the frontispiece portrait of Grimaldi by Greatbatch (handcolored) and the first state of the final plate, “The Last Song,” which appears without the border. Without the “Embellishments” page in Volume I and the 36-page publisher’s catalogue. Exceptionally clean and bright. Expert reinforcement to joints. A beautiful copy. “Never Was A Book Received With More Rapturous Enthusiasm Than That Which Greeted The Pickwick Papers” 05DICKENS, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. London, 1837. Thick octavo, contemporary three-quarter purple polished calf gilt. $6500 First edition, bound from the original parts (mixed first and later issues), of one of Dickens’ greatest works, with 43 illustrations by Seymour, Phiz, and Buss. “From a literary standpoint the supremacy of this book has been… firmly established… It was written by Dickens when he was 24 and its publication placed the author on a solid foundation from which he never was removed…. It is quite probable that only Shakespeare’s Works, the Bible and perhaps the English Prayer Book exceed Pickwick Papers in circulation” (Eckel, 17). “Never was a book received with more rapturous enthusiasm than that which greeted the Pickwick Papers!” (Allibone I:500). Mixed issue, with six of the seven first-issue points elaborated by Smith after Hatton & Cleaver. Smith I:3. Eckel 17-58. Gimbel A15. Bookplate; old bookseller ticket. Some foxing to plates; text generally clean. Contemporary calf-gilt sound and attractive.
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