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(DICKENS, Charles) KNIGHT, Charles, ed.
Half-Hours with The Best Authors.
Selected and arranged, with short biographical and critical notices … Illustrated with portraits.
First edition, presentation copy to Charles Dickens, inscribed by Knight on the first front free endpaper verso: "To Charles Dickens Esq. With the editor's best regards. August 31, 1848", and with Dickens's bookplate in each volume. Best remembered for his pictorial edition of Shakespeare's works, Charles Knight (1791–1873) was also a journalist and publisher particularly interested in educating a working-class readership. In 1845 Knight met Douglas Jerrold, the playwright and Punch contributor, through whom he came to know Dickens as a friend. Knight contributed to the first two volumes of Dickens's Household Words and joined the company of Dickens's Amateur Company of the Guild, which toured the provinces in 1850–51. In remembrance of that tour, Knight is included among the dedicatees of Bleak House. This book finds space for a half-hour from Dickens, the duel scene from Nicholas Nickleby, printed in volume IV.
4 volumes, octavo. Original purple vertical-fine-ribbed cloth, sides blocked in blind with an elaborate design incorporating at centre the monogram of the publisher/editor, spines blocked in blind to a similar design and lettered in gilt, cream endpapers. Housed in a dark green morocco book-form pull-off case by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, green watered silk chemise, with Dickens's initials and lion crest stamped in gilt on maroon circular labels either side of the upper part of the case. Portrait frontispiece in each volume, 9 portrait plates (13 portraits in total). Engraved bookplate of Charles Dickens to each front pastedown.
