“A DEATHLESS NICHE IN THE TEMPLE OF FAME”

DICKENS, Charles. Works. London: Chapman and Hall, circa 1887. Thirty volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter dark green morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut. $11,000.

Illustrated “Library Edition,” with over 400 black-and-white plates after the original illustrations, handsomely bound by Blunson.

"His imaginative freshness, his deep and sincere tenderness and pity, his whole-souled humor that is seldom sharpened into wit, his superabundance of creative energy, have built a deathless niche in the temple of fame for Charles Dickens" (Kunitz & Haycraft, 184). This edition includes all of Dickens' major works— including The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and the Christmas books, chief among them A Christmas Carol. Generously illustrated with over 400 black-and-white plates after the original illustrations by "Phiz," H.K. Browne, Cruikshank and others. Laid into Volume II—Pickwick—is an illustration by R.W. Buss for a cricket match described in Chapter VII. Bookplates.

Plates and text generally clean, with light foxing to text block edges, occasional scattered foxing to frontispieces and title pages, heavier in Sketches by Boz. Very handsomely bound.