Great Expectations.

DICKENS, Charles.

$45,000.00

Item Number: 142357

London: Chapman and Hall, 1861.

First edition, first impression of Dickens’ rarest novel. Octavo, three volumes bound in full royal blue crushed levant morocco by Bayntun Bindery with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and wide gilt inner dentelles stamp-signed by Bayntun, all edges gilt. The earliest impression of Dicken’s rarest novel. This copy agrees in all points with Margaret Caldwell’s extensive analysis of the differing impressions in the Clarendon edition of Great Expectations. As in the Lawrence Drizen copy sold in 2019 at Sotheby’s and in the Clarendon edition, the third volume here contains the numeral “3” in the pagination on p. 103, and the initial “i” in “inflexible” on p. 193, which are sometimes missing in copies of the first impression of the third volume, indicating that the present copy is among the earlier printings of the first impression. Smith comments that “the rarity of the first issue of Great Expectations has been attributed to the probable small binding-up of copies with the first title-page, coupled with the fact (according to C.P. Johnson, “Hints to Collectors”) that “the first edition was almost entirely taken up by the libraries.” Only 1,000 copies of the first issue and 750 copies of the second were printed and that probably most of the first and more than half of the second (1400 copies in all) were purchased by Mudie’s Select Library. Eckel, pp. 91-93; Sadleir 688; Smith I:14. In fine condition. An exceptional example of one of Dickens’ great masterpieces.

Dickens' penultimate novel, Great Expectations, was written in "the afternoon of [his] life and fame" (G.K. Chesterton). The novel contains some of Dickens' most memorable scenes, including its opening, set in a graveyard, when the young orphan Pip is accosted by escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. Although Dickens' contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as "that Pip nonsense," he nevertheless reacted to each fresh instalment with "roars of laughter." Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as "all of one piece and consistently truthful." During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales; when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it "a very fine, new and grotesque idea."