Oliver Twist.

DICKENS, Charles.

$975.00

Item Number: 147626

London: Bradbury & Evans, Whitefriars, 1846.

Early edition of Dickens’s classic second novel. Octavo, bound in full calf, full morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, frontispiece, with twenty-four illustrations on steel by George Cruikshank. In near fine condition with some toning.

"Dickens turned in Oliver Twist to the novel of crime and terror. Some characters are drawn with humorous realism, but for the most part humor is dimmed by gloomy memories of the author’s own neglected childhood and sensational scenes are shrouded in an atmosphere genuinely eerie and sinister That Dickens shared with his contemporaries the conviction that the novel should be an instrument of social reform is evident in Oliver Twist" (Baugh).