DICKENS, Charles.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Dombey and Son. First edition in book form. The novel is "now recognized as one of the greatest of all his works... It is also the first one to have an explicitly contemporary setting" (ODNB).The novel was issued in monthly parts from September 1846 to March 1848, and in book form on completion. It contained "the first published example of a so-called dark plate, which was created by a machine process that tinted the etched plate and heightened its black-and-white contrast. The one dark plate in Dombey and Son is 'On the Dark Road', p. 547. The smooth blending of light and shadow on this illustration vividly contrasts it with the other illustrations in the novel and is a fine example of the dark plate process" (Smith). The technique was later used for ten plates in Bleak House and eight in Little Dorrit.Smith states this binding with a chain frame on the cloth is primary, but Kremers notes that it is secondary, as the design was introduced in the 1860s.

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