The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress (First Edition in Single Volume)

A$2,000 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

First edition

DICKENS, Charles (illus. George Cruikshank). The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. London: Published for the Author by Bradbury Evans, Whitefriars, 1846. 8vo (222 × 138 mm). Full tan calf. Spine with five raised bands; titling to spine on red and black Morocco panels; compartments decorated in gilt. Covers margined in gilt. Elaborate gilt dentelles to turn-ins. All edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Two burgundy silk ribbon markers. Binder's stamp of Bayntun, Bath, to upper corner of front flyleaf. xii, 311 pp. 24 steel-engraved plates by George Cruikshank throughout, each with tissue guard. Final plate: "Rose Maylie and Oliver" — the "Church" plate, confirming this as a later printing of the 1846 edition. Author's Preface to the Third Edition (dated April 1841) to preliminary matter. "A New Edition, Revised and Corrected." First edition in a single volume. The definitive revised text. This copy in the later printing with the "Church" plate, as revised at Dickens's direction. Subsequently and finely bound by Bayntun Binders of Bath. Bibliographic references: Sadleir 696c; Gimbel A39. Oliver Twist began in February 1837, appearing in monthly instalments in Bentley's Miscellany until April 1839. It was the first English novel to take a child as its protagonist, the first to use criminal slang as a literary register, and the first sustained work of fiction to place the poverty and criminality of the London underclass at the centre of a mainstream narrative.

• Printing: later
• Binding: Hardcover

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