GIFTS 88 “Dickens’ Imagination Simply Pours Into Everything He Writes” 123DICKENS, Charles. A Child’s History of England. London, 1852-54. Three volumes. Small octavo, original reddishbrown cloth, custom clamshell box. $3800 First edition, first state, of Dickens’s history of England for children. “Very sharp and very opinionated... Dickens’ imagination simply pours into everything he writes or speaks, and so there are moments of great power” (Ackroyd, Dickens, 584). First state, with first state ads in Volumes I and III and with no page number on p. xi in Volume I. Only slight discoloration or wear to scarce original cloth; Volume III with minor restoration at spine head. Extremely good. Dickens’ The Cricket On The Hearth, First Edition 124DICKENS, Charles. The Cricket on the Hearth. London, 1846. 12mo, original full red cloth gilt. $2200 First edition of Dickens’ third Christmas Book, illustrated with frontispiece, vignette title page, and 12 illustrations by Leech, Doyle, Landseer and Stanfield. Dickens created a new literary genre with his annual Christmas books. Beginning in 1843 with the publication of A Christmas Carol, Dickens published five Christmas-themed books at holiday time. The Cricket on the Hearth was the third in the series. First printing, with second state of advertising leaf at rear. Fine. Superb Illustrated First Edition Of Forster’s Life Of Charles Dickens 125(DICKENS, Charles) FORSTER, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London, 1872-74. Three volumes. Octavo, early 20th-century full red crushed morocco gilt. $2000 First edition of Forster’s Life of Dickens with 17 full-page engravings of the artist and his surroundings. Noted journalist, critic and the first professional biographer of 19thcentury England, John Forster was uniquely suited to pen Dickens’ biography: he read, in manuscript or proof, almost everything Dickens ever wrote, and was the writer’s close friend and literary executor. About-fine.
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