Little Dorrit.

DICKENS, Charles.

Item Number: 119077

London: Bradbury and Evans, 1857.

First edition in book form of one of Dickens’ most outstanding works. Octavo, bound in full morocco with morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt with a fore-edge painting of Dickens. In near fine condition. An exceptional presentation.

“In Little Dorrit Dickens mounts his single most ferocious onslaught against England and English society; against its government, against its financiers, against its artists and even against its ordinary citizens who, at least in Bleeding Heart Yard, believed that …foreigners were always immoral… that foreigners had no independent spirit…” (Ackroyd, 758). Perhaps unsurprisingly, many reviewers reviled the book upon its publication. Dickens’ friend Hans Christian Andersen advised the author to ignore the critics: “They are forgotten in a week, and your book stands and lives” (Ackroyd, 780). And indeed, Little Dorrit does: not only a commercial success in its day (poor press notwithstanding) but also esteemed now as a “wonderfully rich novel— rich in ideas, rich in characterization, rich in incident, and written in a richly imaginative prose… Many [modern] critics regard it as Dickens’ masterpiece” (Watts, 108). The story first appeared as a serial in 1855 and was published in book form in 1857.