The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

DICKENS, Charles.

Item Number: 95314

London: Chapman and Hall, 1836-37.

First edition of Dickens’ first novel and one of his greatest works. Octavo, bound in full morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine, raised gilt bands, triple gilt ruled, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, with all of the published plates in two states, the original pictorial wrapper from part no. XVIII, both the original first issue Veller title page and second issue Weller title page, and the two plates by Buss which Dickens requested to be removed in subsequent printings. Also bound in are the Sam Weller suite of plates and Kyd suite of plates in full color which appeared in 1890. Kyd gained notoriety as an illustrator in late 19th century London by frequenting most of the local inns where he would produce watercolor portrait sketches of patrons in exchange for ale. In very good condition. A sharp example of this important work.

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.