DICKENS, Charles.

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The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. First edition in book form, in the publisher's deluxe binding of full morocco, the most expensive of the multiple issues.As declared in the Nickleby Advertiser, Chapman and Hall sold the book-form edition in three choices of binding: cloth (£1, 1s.), half morocco with marbled edges (£1., 4s., 6.), and full morocco with gilt edges (£1., 6s., 6d.). For about £1 less, they also offered to bind up copies of the parts in the same bindings; such copies are distinguished by their visible stab-holes from sewing. Chapman and Hall's binding services remained available long after publication, both for sheets already sold to private individuals and for unsold sheets of the first editions. Variations in tooling, cloth, and morocco over time can indicate earlier and later bindings, though a full sequence and priority has never been established.Dickens's second novel followed the phenomenal success of the Pickwick Papers (1837). To secure Nickleby Chapman and Hall offered Dickens £150 a part, a sum ten times greater than that which he had received for Pickwick. As with its predecessor, the novel met with great public enthusiasm, which has continued unabated. Dickens's biographer Peter Ackroyd stated that the novel "has some title to being the funniest novel Dickens ever wrote; it is perhaps the funniest novel in the English language" (p. 262).The novel was serialized from April 1838 to October 1839 and published in book form on 23 October 1839.

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