The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens.
With Illustrations by R. Seymour and Phiz. London; Chapman and Hall; MDCCCXXXVII (1837).
FIRST EDITION of Dickens' first published novel in book form, a very early state. EXTRA ILLUSTRATED with the very rare set of 15 Phillips plates bound in at the rear.
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No copies of the first edition of the Pickwick Papers will have all of the first issue points as they were bound up from the original parts. A generally comprehensive list of the key first impression points is listed below.
This copy has [4] of the 7 Smith points with the more desirable 'Veller' state of the frontispiece and with the suppressed Buss plates to pp.69 & pp.74 versos which did not appear after November 1836, making this a very early printing.
Edition Points:
The 7 'unequivocal' first issue points as defined by Walter E. Smith:
pp.260 line 29 "hodling" for "holding" - Present
pp.276 figure "7" in page number slightly above other figures.
pp.341 line 1 correct reading of "inde-licate"; line 5 correct reading of "inscription" with stab holes.
pp.342 line 5: "S. Veller" uncorrected" - Present
pp.400 line 21 "this friends" for "his friends" - Present
pp.432 headline "F" in "OF" imperfect - Present
"E" signature to pp.25 lacking
Condition:
[xiv, (1), 609pp, 15 plates]
Rebacked half calf over marbled boards with the majority of an earlier backstrip laid down to new leather together with the earlier tooled red morocco label. Joints fine with hinges reinforced with cloth. Aforementioned rebacking is expertly achieved with potentially original marbled endpapers reused or at least remarkably similar. Leather rubbed with a bit of loss to backstrip. Paper backed boards scuffed as typical with wear at extremities. Corners without deformation. Binding secure with a very slight shelf lean which is almost unnoticeable. Early bookbinder ticket to foot of pastedown. New endpapers. Frontis and engraved title page heavily oxidised with some offsetting etc and a stain at the head of each leaf. Other plates throughout the text oxidised to a lesser extent but spotted. Six of the first ten numbered pages with leaf edge repairs (i.e. three leaves) without loss to text. Text block generally fairly clean though toned as typical, with light foxing throughout, heavier to the occasional leaf. The Phillips plates to the rear are heavily oxidised to the borders giving a vignette appearance to each with the occasional stain, with the final plate ('Pickwick's Mistake') cut and remounted to a new leaf losing most of the original border but none of the actual illustration or caption.
