The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (First Book Edition)

A$3,200 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

First edition

DICKENS, Charles (illus. Hablot Knight Browne, "Phiz"). The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. London: Chapman and Hall, 1844. Octavo (220 × 139 mm). Full tan polished calf. Spine with five raised bands, triple-ruled in gilt; titling to spine on red and black Morocco panels; compartments elaborately gilt-decorated. Covers margined in gilt. Elaborate gilt dentelles to turn-ins. All edges gilt. Arches hand-laid paper endpapers. Binder's stamp of Morrell, London, to upper corner of front flyleaf. xiv, [errata leaf with 14 lines, verso blank], 624 pp. 40 etched plates throughout including frontispiece and title-page vignette by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). First edition in book form. First issue points present: "100£" on sign-post of vignette title page; vignette signed "Phiz fecit" with seven studs in the trunk lid; 14-line errata leaf; preface dated "twenty-fifth June, 1844"; plates facing pp. 386 and 387 transposed. Subsequently and finely bound by Morrell Binders of London. Bibliographic references: Smith I:7; Hatton Cleaver pp. 183–212; Sadleir. Martin Chuzzlewit was published in nineteen monthly parts by Chapman and Hall between January 1843 and July 1844, with the first edition in book form appearing that same year. It was, by Dickens's own insistent reckoning, his best novel: "I think Chuzzlewit," he wrote to a contemporary, "in a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories", a judgment from which he never wavered despite the commercial disappointment of i

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.