Great Expectations.

DICKENS, Charles.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 132084

London: Chapman and Hall, 1861.

First edition, second impression of Dickens’ popular Victorian bildungsroman. Octavo, bound in three quarter morocco over marbled boards with gilt tooling to the spine in three compartments within raised gilt bands, morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Second impression lacking the advertisements, quite likely as issued. Edition statements neatly removed from titles. In very good condition. Rare and desirable.

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."