The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

DICKENS, Charles.

$4,000.00

Item Number: 99841

London: Curtis Guild, 1882.

First Curtis Guild extra-illustrated edition of one of Dickens’ greatest works. Octavo, two volumes, bound in full morocco by F.P. Hathaway with gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling to spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, elaborate gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, inner dentelles, silk endpapers. With 53 illustrations by Seymour and Phiz extended by insertion of the Seymour, Buss, Onwyhn and Croquil plates and illustrations including 24 etchings by Pailthorpe , 4 steel engravings by Darley, the Buss plates, and many other illustrations some in color. In near fine condition. From the library of American author and actress Cornelia Otis Skinner with her bookplate to the pastedown of each volume. An exceptional example of this elaborate presentation of one of Dickens greatest works with noted provenance.

Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers – a comic masterpiece that catapulted its twenty-four-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle and, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, and his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor’s prison, characters and incidents sprang to life from Dickens’s pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour and literary invention.