“A CLARITY AND PUNGENCY THAT SURPASSES THE REST OF HIS WORK”: FIRST EDITION OF DICKENS’ BLEAK HOUSE, HANDSOMELY BOUND
DICKENS, Charles. Bleak House. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853. Octavo, mid-20th century full straight grain tan morocco gilt, elaborately gilt-decorated spine, raised bands, burgundy morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.
First edition, bound from parts, of one of Dickens’ most acclaimed novels, with 40 engraved illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”), including frontispiece and vignette title page, handsomely bound by Bayntun.
"In Bleak House for the first time [society] is seen as an absurdity, an irrelevance, almost a madness. A dark force from which the real people must escape in order to create another society of their own… [Dickens] had been preparing for this novel all his life and, despite the calamities… which had helped to provoke it in the first place, … was even happy while he was writing it… It might even be said that Bleak House cured the very malaise which was responsible for its composition" (Ackroyd, 649-50). "The Dickens cosmos, his phantasmagoric London and visionary England, emerges in Bleak House with a clarity and pungency that surpasses the rest of his work, before and after" (Bloom, 311). Ten of the 40 plates are Browne's striking "dark plates," deeply etched with a mezzotint-like chiaroscuro contrast (Hatton & Cleaver, 276). Without half title. This copy bound from the original parts, which were issued in 20 numbers, March 1852-September 1853. Smith 10. Gimbel A131. Eckel, 79. Podeschi A131.
Interior generally clean; usual light embrowning to plates. Expert repairs to joints and corners. An excellent copy, handsomely bound.