DICKENS, Charles.

£47,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Works. Extra-illustrated édition de luxe, lettered "A" of 15 lettered sets in fine uniform bindings and adding over 200 original watercolours to enhance the "superb memorial" of Chapman and Hall's 1881-2 édition de Luxe. Printed on Japanese vellum, this set was originally published by Chapman and Hall with more than 700 illustrations, including all those from the first editions.The watercolour artists include H. C. Green and Joseph Clayton Clark (1857-1937), who worked under the name "Kyd" and dedicated almost his entire career to illustrating Dickensian characters to great success. Kyd's first Dickens illustrations appeared in 1887 in Fleet Street Magazine, and as early as 1890 major Dickens collectors such as Thomas Wilson and Frederick Cosens sought his sketches. The British Museum acquired a collection of 598 Kyd illustrations of Dickens in 1910, and the V&A, the Charles Dickens Museum, and the University of Texas each have a significant collection. Even today, Dickens's larger-than-life characters are in part imagined through Kyd's depictions, and in 2012 six of his illustrations were issued as stamps by the Royal Mail to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth.

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