"HUMAN LIFE TOUCHED BY MAJESTY AND PURPOSE"

DICKENS, Charles. Dombey and Son. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1848. Thick octavo, early 20th-century three-quarter green morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers, all edges gilt. $2800.

First edition in book form of Dickens' novel of "Pride," with 40 etchings by Hablôt Knight Browne ("Phiz"), including the famous "dark plate," handsomely bound by Larkins.

For its inclusion of fairy-tale themes and the much discussed demise of Paul Dombey, Dombey and Son "has a sense of the numinous, is more profoundly touched by the sense of last things, than any of Dickens' previous novels. It is larger in conception, so that human life is seen in terms of its beginning and its end, so that grief and forgiveness become more powerful forces within it… Dickens is aware of its status as art and provides here a simulacrum of human life touched by majesty and purpose" (Ackroyd, 526). Dombey and Son "was well received by its readers, and is considered to be the first novel that reflects Dickens's artistic maturity… Dickens told his first biographer, 'It was to do with Pride what its predecessor [Martin Chuzzlewit] has done with Selfishness" (Schlicke, 280). Dombey and Son contains the first of Browne's so-called "dark plates" ("On the Dark Road," at page 547), created by the engraver's lining machine and roulettes that tint the etched plate so as to heighten the contrast between black and white, anticipating some of the techniques of white-line engraving (Johannsen, Phiz, 309). First states of pages 284 ("Delight" instead of "Joy"); 324 (with "Capatin" on the last line); 426 (with blank space at the beginning of line 9). Bound without the half title; with errata sheet and slip. Eckel, 74-76. Smith I:8. Gimbel (Podeschi) A103.

Internally clean, spine gently toned, gilt bright. A handsomely bound, near-fine copy.