"DICKENS SEEMS TO HAVE READ WARREN'S FICTION… AND TO HAVE BORROWED IMAGES AND IDEAS"

WARREN, Samuel. Ten Thousand a-Year. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1841. Three volumes. Octavo, contemporary full russet calf, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, black morocco spine labels, all edges marbled. $1600.

First edition in book form of this classic 19th-century novel, popular in both England and the United States for much of the second half of the 19th-century, and a likely influence on Dickens, attractively bound.

"Warren's second novel… which was an immediate best-seller, concerns a firm of attorneys who discover that Tittlebat Titmouse, a poor draper's clerk, may have a claim to the large estate of Yatton. The attorneys commence an action which results in Titmouse displacing the unbelievably pious John Aubrey as the owner of the estate, and its annual income of £10,000. Titmouse revels in his new found wealth, until a new round of litigation is commenced which returns Aubrey to his place as squire of Yatton. Titmouse is disgraced, and ends his life in a lunatic asylum. The narrator repeatedly tells the reader that the English legal system is close to perfection, but the actual workings of the law in Ten Thousand a-Year paint a more negative picture. Dickens seems to have read Warren's fiction and non-fiction, and to have borrowed images and ideas" (ODNB). First published in the Blackwood's Magazine in installments in 1839. Armorial bookplates.

Text fine, contemporary binding with some toning to brown, modest wear. An extremely good copy.