The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens with twelve illustrations by S.L. Fildes, and a portrait. London: Chapman and Hall, 1870. FIRST EDITION FIRST IMPRESSION.
8vo, pp.vii, [i] list of illustrations, 1-190, [ii] advert leaf for Dickens' works + 30pp W.H. Smith's catalogue dated June 1872, + 8pp miscellaneous adverts (including All the Year Round part for May). Collated as complete.
Engraved portrait frontispiece, extra engraved vignette title and 12 illustrations by Samuel Luke Fildes.
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Original publisher's cloth secondary binding (Carter B) of green fine bead-grain cloth, front cover stamped in black with a two line outer border, gold-impressed rectangular panel and the title and author's name stamped in gold, spine lettered in gold and decorated in black, back cover stamped in blind, cream endpapers, edges unsprinkled.
Including the original W.H. Smith blindstamp to the front free endpaper from its original purchase in the 1870s.
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FIRST EDITION of Dickens' final and unfinished novel in the first of two secondary bindings identified by Carter, distinguished from the first by lack of sawtooth outer border on the front cover and the stamping on the back being in blind.
Condition:
Slightly shaken, extremities slightly rubbed, inner margins of vignette and printed title page reinforced with binding tape. Some exceedingly minor scattered spotting (chiefly to page edges). The binding is exceptionally bright compared to typical examples. The first four leaves are separated from the remaining text block but attached to the binding with backstrip subsequently detached from board when opened between leaves 4 and 5.
A very good example in the original cloth of Dickens' final novel.
[Eckel, p.96-8; Smith I, 16; Carter, Binding Variants, pp.108-9]
