“HIS SINGLE MOST FEROCIOUS ONSLAUGHT AGAINST ENGLAND”: FIRST EDITION OF DICKENS’ LITTLE DORRIT

DICKENS, Charles. Little Dorrit. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1857. Octavo, 20th-century full tan calf rebacked with elaborately gilt-decorated spine laid down, brown morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. $2800.

First edition in book form, first issue, of one of Dickens’ most outspoken and outstanding novels, with 40 illustrations by Hablôt Knight Brown (“Phiz”), including frontispiece and vignette title page, handsomely bound by Bayntun.

"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). First issue, still retaining signature "B2" on page 371 and "Rigaud" mistakenly substituted for "Blandois" on pages 469-74. Eckel, 82-85. Smith I:12. Gimbel (Podeschi) A141.

Plates and text fine, light expert restoration to extremities of attractive calf binding.