FIRST ISSUE OF LITTLE DORRIT, IN ORIGINAL PARTS

DICKENS, Charles. Little Dorrit. London: Bradbury and Evans, December 1855-June 1857. Twenty parts in nineteen. Octavo, original pictorial blue paper wrappers (several sympathetically respined or repaired). Housed in custom chemise and slipcase. $5200.

First edition, first issue, in the original serialized parts, with cover design and illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne.

Little Dorrit "is a wonderfully rich novel—rich in ideas, rich in characterization, rich in incident, and written in a richly imaginative prose… many critics regard it as Dickens' masterpiece" (Watts, 108). "So it is that in Little Dorrit Dickens mounts his single most ferocious onslaught against England and English society; against its government, against its financiers, against its artists, and even against its ordinary citizens… In Little Dorrit, money itself is seen to be a faithless and corrupt delusion. Even when the Dorrits become rich, they cannot escape their past. The only hope is to be found in endurance, which was precisely the message [Dickens] was giving to some of his correspondents in the same period" (Ackroyd, 758). Complete with all text, titles, plates, and errata called for in the first issue, including the character name "Rigaud" rather than "Blandois" on pp. 469, 470, 472, and 474, and the subsequent correction slip bound in after the plates in Number XVI. All numbers with all advertisements as called for by Hatton & Cleaver, with the following minor exceptions: Part 13 without one slip to follow the plates, "Household Words"; Part 19/20 without four-page insert at rear. Part 19/20 with rear wrapper substituted from Part 8 rear wrapper from another copy. Hatton & Cleaver, 305-30. Eckel, 82-84. Yale/Gimbel A140. Three parts with early owner signatures on front wrappers; bookseller embossed stamp to front wrapper of Part 1 and first ad leaf of Part 16.

Text generally quite clean, only a few plates with minor foxing or faint tidemarks. Parts 1, 5, 6, 9, 10-12, 19/20 neatly respined, a few others with repairs to spine; a few wrappers with slight edge-wear or creasing, as often. A very good, attractive set, handsomely boxed.