"A CLARITY AND PUNGENCY THAT SURPASSES THE REST OF HIS WORK": DICKENS' BLEAK HOUSE, IN ORIGINAL PARTS AND SCARCE ORIGINAL BLUE WRAPPERS

DICKENS, Charles. Bleak House. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1852-53. Twenty parts in 19, as issued. Octavo, original blue paper wrappers; housed in custom chemise and slipcase. $9500.

Scarce first edition in original parts and wrappers of Dickens' ambitious, bracing masterpiece, with 40 engraved illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"), including frontispiece and nine other dramatic "dark plates," as well as vignette title page. An excellent copy in original blue paper wrappers, with all but one advertisement present.

Structured "with a daring double narrative and centered on institutional satire," Bleak House is "technically [Dickens'] most ambitious novel and widely held to be his masterpiece" (Schlicke, 45). In it, "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). Issued in 20 numbers in 19 parts from March 1852 to September 1853. Bleak House was the first Dickens novel issued in parts in blue paper wrappers; previous works had appeared in green paper wrappers. Ten of the 40 plates are Browne's striking "dark plates," deeply etched with a mezzotint-like chiaroscuro contrast (Hatton & Cleaver, 276-77). It is common with this work for several advertisements to be absent from the individual parts: in this copy, only one advertisement, an insert for "Grace Aguilar's Works" in Part XVI, is absent. Hatton & Cleaver, 275-304. Gimbel A130. Bookplate to chemise. small contemporary owner signatures on front wrappers of all but two of the parts.

Plates and text in excellent condition, exceptionally fresh and clean; original wrappers with minor wear to spine ends and a few corners, spine to part XIV expertly restored. A beautiful copy.