Collecting the Works of Charles Dickens

Collecting the Works of Charles Dickens

Sep 6, 2022 | Articles, Collectors' Guides, Literature, Recent Articles

Charles Dickens is regarded as the greatest English novelist of the nineteenth century and is the most quoted writer in English after Shakespeare. Bursting with vivid characters and settings, Dickens’s novels show his characteristic concern for the most vulnerable in contemporary English society. His flair for painting characters who are indelibly memorable for their idiosyncratic appearance, mannerisms, and catchphrases, but who nevertheless represent unchanging aspects of human nature, is one much aped. It was G. K. Chesterton who remarked on Dickens’ capacity for empathy, saying: “Dickens, being a very human writer, had to be a very human being”. As one of the most collected authors the world over, we revisit the publication history of each of his works, explaining what to look out for in Charles Dickens first editions.

A collection of Charles Dickens first editions.

Charles Dickens, Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, First edition, in the original monthly parts published from September 1846 to March 1848.

Charles Dickens First Editions: A Story in Parts

For any collector of Dickens, the thing to bear in mind is that many of his major novels first appeared serialised in monthly parts. These parts issues have traditionally commanded the higher prices than the Charles Dickens first editions in book form. Nine of Dickens’s fifteen novels – The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), Dombey and Son (1848), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), Our Mutual Friend (1864), and Edwin Drood (1870) – first appeared in this format. The parts issues have many complexities explained in full in A Bibliography of the Periodical Works of Charles Dickens by Thomas Hatton and Arthur H. Cleaver, published in 1933. While the complex information found in ‘Hatton & Cleaver’ can be bewilderingly thorough, the key is to find sets in parts with clean text, the wrappers intact without restoration to their spines, and the plates, which are liable to oxidisation, in fresh condition.

The monthly parts had green or blue illustrated paper wrappers, with engraved plates preceding the text. Inside the wrappers, printed advertisements by companies keen to capitalise on Dickens’ success bulked out the text. Much of the pleasure of collecting Dickens in parts is to see first-hand his work appear in the midst of this noisy marketplace of Victorian merchants and quacks.

Once the parts issue neared its end, the publishers would put out the complete novel as a single volume. More than half of Dickens’s major novels were issued in a large size known as demy (rhymes with “defy”) octavo—at 8 ½ by 5 ½ inches, a little shorter than a typical modern hardback. These were simple case-bindings of purple or green cloth. As Dickens’ novels were of such exuberant length, the sheer weight of his texts meant that these relatively flimsy cases were prone to damage. The publishers also offered various styles of deluxe of leather bindings.

Charles Dickens first edition of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

First edition of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club in demy octavo, bound from the original parts in the publisher’s primary cloth binding (1837).

 The Early Works

Charles Dickens began his writing career as a parliamentary reporter, employing his sharp observational skills to report on debates and cover election campaigns. Together with his irrepressible comic gusto, he brought this talent to descriptions of everyday life gathered in his first book, the two-volume Sketches by Boz (1836) – though the primary selling point was its illustrations by the renowned George Cruikshank.

Dickens’s second book was planned as a variation on the illustrated format popularised by Sketches. The publisher had commissioned a monthly serial following the misadventures of a group of cockney sportsmen. In the fourth instalment, Dickens introduced the character of Sam Weller, who proved so popular with readers that the effect on sales was stratospheric. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837) proved to be a publishing sensation.

Dickens’ second novel, and one of his most enduringly popular, was Oliver Twist (1838), illustrated by Cruikshank. It was serialised first, then published in three volumes for the circulating libraries. Dickens often used Oliver Twist for his popular dramatic readings, which taught him the value of concision and inspired him to edit the novel down somewhat. When he fell out with Bentley and bought back his copyright, he tightened Oliver for a New Edition (1846), issued in ten monthly parts, then in a single demy octavo volume.

Charles Dickens 1st Edition of "The Adventures of Oliver Twist".

The Adventures of Oliver Twist, first one-volume edition of Dickens’s second novel in original blue cloth (1846).

Bestsellers

Dickens’ most famous single work is A Christmas Carol (1843), both a charged fable about economic injustice and redistribution and a central reference point to the modern notion of Christmas itself; indeed, the name of the protagonist, Scrooge, has become part of our language, shorthand for a miserly and selfish person. A Christmas Carol was the first in a series of five annual Christmas books written by Dickens, each published in a small octavo format for the Christmas gift market. The book itself is notable amongst these, as Dickens was still experimenting with the form. The binding is salmon-pink cloth, with a gilt wreath on the front cover. Dickens, who financed the publication himself, originally wanted the title page in Christmas colours of red and green and the endpapers to be green, but the printed green proved problematic and was abandoned after a short run. The title page was reset in red and blue and the endpapers changed back to the usual machine-coated yellow. Copies in both states were issued together on publication day, so a collector can consider either state acceptable. But the book was quickly reprinted with minor text changes; only the first impression, with ‘Stave I’ at the head of the text, in fine condition carries top market value.

Charles Dickens First Editions of his five Christmas novels.

First editions, first printings, of the complete set of Dickens’s Christmas books (1843).

The other Christmas books were issued in standard red book cloth, avoiding the production complexities and expense that plagued A Christmas Carol. A fine set of the Christmas books in cloth, glinting in cinnamon and scarlet by the winter fireside, is a high spot in any Charles Dickens first editions collection.

Master Humphrey’s Clock was first issued in weekly rather than monthly parts and contained The Old Curiosity Shop (1840) and Barnaby Rudge within its narrative frame. These were later published as separate books. Both are in imperial octavo, taller than the usual demy octavo. At the other end of the scale, Hard Times (1854) first appeared in Dickens’s weekly periodical, Household Words. It was priced lower than Dickens’s other novels and issued in small octavo format without illustrations.

A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Dickens’s best-selling novel, was first published weekly in his own periodical, All the Year Round. Dickens later republished the story as eight monthly parts. The single demy octavo volume was first issued in red cloth.

Charles Dickens first edition of Master Humphrey’s Clock.

First edition of Master Humphrey’s Clock in tall octavo (1840).

Although many of his novels were illustrated, perhaps his greatest work, Great Expectations (1861), was published without illustration. The most attractive of his novels in book form, it appeared in three volumes to meet the requirements of the circulating libraries (as Oliver Twist had), but handsomely dressed in eye-catching violet wavy-grain cloth, with High Victorian gilt decoration around the spine titles. Expecting huge demand, the publishers printed five impressions before publication. The majority of the first impression and more than half of the second—1,400 copies in all—went to Mudie’s Select Library, where they were read to death by eager customers, leaving them damaged or destroyed. A first impression of Great Expectations in fine original cloth is thus highly sought-after and can fetch high prices. The last outstanding example to come to market sold at Sotheby’s in 2019 for £175,000.

Charles Dickens First Editions: Other Works

Before he had perfected the sketch-writer’s art, Dickens dreamed of a theatrical career.  In branching out from his most famous works, his theatrical preoccupation becomes more apparent, whether in the memoirs of the great clown Joey Grimaldi (1838) he ghost-wrote for Bentley, or his own original melodramas, like The Frozen Deep (1856, publ. 1866), co-written and performed with his friend Wilkie Collins.

In later years he expended a considerable portion of his energies on dramatic readings, carefully editing his original texts into readable segments. He had some of these privately printed in small numbers. Necessarily rare, those few copies that have come to market in recent years have fetched high prices.

Dickens’s showmanship found expression in his self-presentation. The frontispiece of his third novel, Nicholas Nickleby, displayed, instead of the more usual illustrated scene from the book, a handsome engraved portrait of the newly wealthy young author. Below the plate was a printed facsimile of the famous Dickens signature, festooned with a swag of repeated underlines, the mark of his theatrical sensibilities.

Charles Dicken's portrait in one of his first editions.

That ostentatious signature is present even on the briefest of letters he dashed off – and like many Victorian authors, Dickens was a prodigious writer of letters. His autograph letters, especially those which relate to his major novels, are keenly sought, with prices ranging from a few hundred pounds for everyday notes to tens of thousands for longer letters of major significance.

If you are interested in starting a Dickens collection and would like further guidance from one of our experts, or help with sourcing your first book, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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The Nonesuch Dickens

The Nonesuch Dickens

Jul 21, 2014 | Articles, Collectors' Guides, Literature

Originally published in 1937, the Nonesuch Dickens continues to be a sought-after collector’s piece for anyone. The director of the Limited Editions Club of New York, George Macy, described the collection as “the final Dickens”, as none other could retain the same level of authenticity that the Nonesuch Press had achieved. As Arthur Waugh, father of Evelyn Waugh and managing director of Chapman and Hall, wrote in the Nonesuch Dickensiana: “It will never be possible for a more complete and perfect Dickens to be put on the market”.

The Nonesuch Dickens comprises 27 volumes, including a subscriber’s guide and three volumes of letters. Each set is accompanied by an original printing plate of one of the illustrations used for the first publication. Our set includes the original steel plate used for David Copperfield: “Mr Dick fulfils my aunt’s prediction”.

Original woodblock from the Nonesuch Dickens.

The Nonesuch Press was one of several deluxe publishers that aspired to the aesthetic standards of the private press movement. Founded in 1922, the Nonesuch Press had a similar aim to William Morris’s Kelmscott Press: to produce artistically designed volumes that demonstrated a care and love for the book, the materials used, and the process of production. But while the Nonesuch Press designed their editions by hand, they printed them on a trade press. This allowed them to bring their volumes to a mass audience and gave them greater commercial success than the small print runs of their arts and crafts predecessors.

The Press’s founder, Francis Meynell, believed that “The readable book is the well-dressed woman. Richness of clothing is not the test, but fitness for the occasion” (A History of the Nonesuch Press, Dreyfus, 1981, p.13). Whereas the Kelmscott Press had produced books thickly forested with ornamental type, woodcut initials and illustrations, Meynell designed his volumes with the experience of the reader uppermost in mind.

Proof of print for the original wood block titled On Dangerous Ground.

Original wood block (and a proof print) “On Dangerous Ground” by Luke Fildes, originally facing page 50 in the first edition of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, together with the certificate of authenticity from Chapman and Hall, signed by Deputy Chairman Arthur Waugh.

With a particular appreciation for the quality of paper, Meynell oversaw the creation of an acid-free variety with a Nonesuch watermark of their insignia, the bear and the castle, here leaving the fore and lower edges uncut for a luxurious feel. The prospectus sent to potential subscribers promised the volumes would be bound in cloth in a “brave array of reds and yellows and blues and browns, an effect that should prove even more charming than the novels themselves”.

The attention to detail taken with this edition would no doubt would have been appreciated by the author. Charles Dickens had been closely involved in the choice of each illustration, and his relationships with his illustrators were crucial to his creativity. Fortunately for Meynell, the plates and blocks from the first editions were still in useable condition, allowing him not only to print from them but also to include an original as a unique addition to each set. With the edition perforce limited to 877 sets, potential subscribers were selected by lot.

As for the text, the Nonesuch Press printed from the last edition which Dickens had revised, and added “every authentic scrap of his writing which has been collected since his death”. If you would like to learn more about collecting Dickens, we recommend that you read our collector’s guide to Charles Dickens first editions.

View all works by Dickens currently in stock.

Charles Dickens: The Publishing Formats of his First Editions

Charles Dickens: The Publishing Formats of his First Editions

Nov 26, 2012 | Collectors' Guides

 

Adam Douglas, Senior Specialist in Early Literature at Peter Harrington talks about the different publishing formats of Charles Dickens’ first editions.

Read our author’s page for Charles Dickens and read our blog post about the Centenary of Charles Dickens first editions.

 

Video transcript:

Most of the novels of Charles Dickens were originally published in monthly parts, like this copy of “David Copperfield”. Each month, you would get a part of the book, a few chapters wrapped up in printed wrappers with illustrations, by the same illustrator who did the book. There would be advertising in it, the Copperfield Advertiser, where advertisers would vie to take advertising space in these books as they were the best sellers of the age.

Dickens wasn’t the only novelist who published in this way, but he was the most famous. It was his success with “The Pickwick Papers” that led to most of his novels being published in this format.

The usual format would be that there were 20 parts and for the final part, you would get a double number, which this is part 19 and 20 of “David Copperfield”. That would include with it the printed title page, which would allow you to have the book bound up when you’d finished. This would include the engraved title page and the printed title page and you could then have the book put into a single volume.

This is a single volume of “The Pickwick Papers” in full leather binding, done in typical Victorian style. Dickens experimented with various other formats.

For “Master Humphrey’s Clock”, which is a larger work and in fact incorporates two novels into the one book; “Barnaby Rudge” and “The Old Curiosity Shop”, he did them in weekly parts. They are obviously much thinner and these are quite rare, but it wasn’t a success and he usually stuck to the monthly formula.

At the end, when the parts were finished, the publisher would re-issue the book in a cloth binding. This copy is “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” in the publisher’s binding. It is noticeably thinner than other Dickens’ titles because Dickens died before he finished the book, but the publisher still felt it was worth publishing the book in original cloth.

Dickens’ career started with his Sketches by “Boz”. Boz was a nickname that he used and he wrote comic sketches of everyday life and this is its first book form edition in two volumes.

He then went on to write his first huge success, which was “Pickwick Papers”, published in parts. Again, he is known as Boz on the title pages of this book.

By now, people realised that he was going to be one of the best-selling novelist of the age and in his novel “Oliver Twist”, he decided to come out from behind the shelves with his pseudonym. In early printings of “Oliver Twist”, you still have his name as “Boz” on the title page but in later issues he changed that to Charles Dickens. From then on, he became known as Charles Dickens and was at that time probably one of the most famous man in the world, let alone writer.

Dickens did several things which were innovative in publishing, perhaps his most notable is “A Christmas Carol”, which is a story he published as a Christmas book. He had it done up in this small but still lavishly produced gift format, in a rather pretty cinnamon cloth binding with a guild writhe on the front. He took great care over it and had the title pages printed out in various colours to see which one looked best. He decided in the end that red and blue looked best and had illustrations done by John Leech, one of several illustrators who illustrated Dickens’ works.

Copies like this in original cloth and in original state are very much sought after by collectors.

We also have other books associated with Dickens. We have a book here which is from his library, it has his book plate in it, which is from his house in Gads Hill, a large house he built for himself in Kent with the proceeds of his novels.

This is a selection called “Half Hours With The Best Authors”, edited by Charles Knight. He was known as a Shakespearian scholar but he was also friend of Dickens. Here he has inscribed a book: “To Charles Dickens Esq”. He was one of the dedicatees of “Bleak House” and did some acting with Dickens in Dickens private dramatical.

For the Bicentenary: Charles Dickens First Editions

For the Bicentenary: Charles Dickens First Editions

Feb 7, 2012 | Literature

First edition of Charles Dickens’s first book, Sketches by Boz (1836).

Happy 200th Birthday to Charles Dickens! Today we’ll look at Dickens’s publishing history and the formats in which his novels originally appeared.

Pictured above, a first edition of Dickens’s very first book, Sketches by Boz. In 1828 the young Dickens had set out to become a freelance journalist, and in 1833 his first literary work, a humorous sketch titled ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’ (later retitled ‘Mr. Minns and His Cousin’), appeared in the Monthly Magazine. Additional stories followed, and soon Dickens was writing a regular series for the Evening Chronicle called “Sketches of London”. These were published as Sketches by Boz in 1836. Illustrated by the famous satirist Cruikshank, the sketches “were praised for their humour, wit, touches of pathos, and the ‘startling fidelity’ of their descriptions of London life” (ODNB). The book was  so popular that a second printing was required almost immediately.

Dickens’s second book, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, was proposed by the newly formed publishing firm Chapman & Hall. They had planned a series of amusing sketches by an artist named Robert Seymour and asked Dickens to write stories to accompany them. When the original artist committed suicide only a few months into the project a young man named Hablot K. Brown was selected as his replacement. ‘Phiz’, as he became known, would remain Dickens’s preferred illustrator for the next two decades, working on ten of his novels including David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Bleak House. Pickwick itself was a sensation, achieving a circulation of 40,000, and making its author a literary celebrity.

It also established serialisation as an important publishing format, financially lucrative because it facilitated the build-up of narrative tension and kept the public engaged with the story, while allowing for  significant numbers of advertisements in each relatively inexpensive instalment (not unlike television shows). Most of Dickens’s future novels, and those of many other major nineteenth-century writers, would be serialised.

First edition in the original cloth of Oliver Twist

First edition in the original cloth of Oliver Twist (1838).

Following the success of Pickwick, Dickens began his very first novel, Oliver Twist; or The Parish Boy’s Progress. The story was originally published in twenty-four parts in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany.

The copy pictured above is a first edition, first issue in book form, published by Richard Bentley in 1838 shortly before the completion of the serialised version.

The rush to prepare illustrations for the book version resulted in the inclusion in early copies of “The Fireside Plate”, an illustration of Oliver at Rose Maylie’s knee (volume III, page 313) that Dickens objected to and asked to be replaced. The most collectible copies are those that, like the above, include the Fireside Plate.

First edition of Charles Dickens’s Master Humphrey’s Clock in the original weekly installments.

Following Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby (serialised in 1838 and39), Chapman & Hall experimented with another type of serialisation. Master Humphrey’s Clock was a weekly published between 1840 and 1841 that contained stand-alone short stories as well as instalments of two different novels, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge. Each issue was composed of a single folded sheet consisting of sixteen pages, of which twelve were numbered pages of letterpress and the others formed the outer wrapper. Every four or five weeks the unsold copies from the past month were gathered and bound together to create the monthly issue bound in green wrappers. When both these periodical issues were complete, the whole was bound in three volumes in purple-brown cloth. The weekly format seen above is the scarcest in commerce.

From then on, Dickens’s long novels (ten more published between 1844 and 1870) first appeared either on their own as monthly instalments, usually in blue-green wrappers and with two illustrations per instalment, or as weekly instalments in one of his own magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round. Pictured below is a copy of David Copperfield in the original monthly parts.

Charles Dickens's David Copperfield in the original monthly parts

Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield in the original monthly parts (1849–50).

Once the series was complete, readers often had the parts bound together as a book (the final instalment was always issued with a frontispiece, two dated title pages, and sometimes prefatory matter, to be bound at the front of these volumes, so that they were more like official books than collections of pamphlets).

This is why many of our descriptions of Dickens’s novels say “first edition, bound from parts”. A good way to tell if a copy is bound from the original parts is by checking for stab holes, tiny holes in the gutter (the margin adjacent to the spine) left by the needle when the parts were originally bound in wrappers. Novels still in the original parts, like the David Copperfield set above, are much less common than copies of the same books bound from parts.

They’re also important historical artefacts, as the ads can tell us a great deal about Victorian life and the audience for Dickens’s novels. But bound copies are also highly collectable. Below, two examples in contemporary calf bindings:

First edition of Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, bound from the original parts (1857).

First edition of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, bound from the original parts (1853).

Not all of Dickens’s work first appeared serially. A Christmas Carol, perhaps his most famous creation, was published as a stand-alone novella by Chapman & Hall in 1843. It was written “at a white heat” (ODNB) out of anger at the treatment of the poor, particularly children, and was an instant sensation. First editions in the original cloth, featuring a coloured frontispiece and title page, are uncommon, but an attractive and more easily obtainable facsimile edition was published in 1956. The success of A Christmas Carol led to the publication of four additional “Christmas books”, approximately one a year through 1848.

First edition in the original cloth of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843).

Colour frontispiece and title page from the first edition of A Christmas Carol.

In addition to his fiction, Dickens was known for his voluminous correspondence. Most of this now resides in libraries and archives, but pieces occasionally appear on the market, and we’re lucky enough to have a letter in his hand:

Letter in Charles Dickens's handwriting

Letter in Charles Dickens’s handwriting. – SOLD

In it, he writes to express his regret that he was unable to attend the funeral of a relative with the surname Culliford (his mother’s maiden name, which he gave to his eldest son Charley as a middle name).

Half-Hours by the Best Authors, presentation copy inscribed to Charles Dickens

Half-Hours by the Best Authors, presentation copy inscribed to Charles Dickens, with Dickens’s bookplate.

Also of significance for collectors  are books from Dickens’s personal library. Above is a set entitled Half-Hours by the Best Authors, a collection of short pieces (each would take half an hour to read) plucked from various books, including a duel scene from Nicholas Nickleby.

The editor, Charles Knight, has inscribed the book to Dickens, whose bookplate appears in each volume. Knight (1791–1873) was a journalist and publisher particularly interested in educating the working-class. He contributed to the first two volumes of Dickens’s Household Words and joined Dickens’s Amateur Company of the Guild, a theatrical group which toured the provinces in 1850–51. In remembrance of that tour, Knight was included among the dedicatees of Bleak House. Below, Dickens’s bookplate as it appears in this set:

Bookplate of Charles Dickens.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this look at Dickens from a rare book perspective. You can view our entire selection of Dickens books here. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, or if you have a first edition or signed book you’d like to sell, please contact us. Below, a selection of other links for the Dickens bicentenary: