FIRST ISSUE OF DICKENS' JOSEPH GRIMALDI, SUPERBLY BOUND WITH PICTORIAL MOROCCO INLAYS, WITH 12 CRUIKSHANK PLATES AND EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED WITH 37 ADDITIONAL HAND-COLORED PLATES

(DICKENS, Charles). Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. Edited by Boz. With illustrations by George Cruikshank. London: Richard Bentley, 1838. Two volumes. Octavo, early 20th-century full red morocco gilt, front covers decorated Kelliegram-style with multi-color pictorial inlaid designs, raised bands, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. $6700.

First edition, first issue, beautifully bound by Bayntun in the Kelliegram style with pictorial multi-colored morocco inlays on the front covers, with hand-colored frontispiece portrait and the 12 original Cruikshank plates, and extra-illustrated with 50 additional plates by Cruikshank, Phiz, Heath and others (37 hand-colored and six folding).

The front covers are decorated with multi-color pictorial inlaid designs of two characters. While Cruikshank's illustrations for the Memoirs "make those by 'Phiz,' the commonly acknowledged illustrator of Dickens, seem tame in conception and feeble in drawing… Cruikshank etched as Dickens wrote. Both were townsmen to the core and cockneys to their fingertips. London leaps to life through their art" (James, 29). Boz is only credited as the editor of the Memoirs, "Richard Bentley, the publisher of the book… stated that Dickens wrote a good deal of the work" (Eckel, 153). First issue with the frontispiece portrait of Grimaldi by Greatbatch (here hand-colored) and the first state of the final plate, "The Last Song," which appears without the border. Without the "Embellishments" page in Volume I and the 36-page publisher's catalogue. Eckel, 152-153. CBEL III:446.

Text and plates exceptionally clean and bright. Expert reinforcement to joints. A beautiful copy.