The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.
With Illustrations by Phiz.
London: Chapman and Hall, 1844 Stock Code: 147988
First edition, bound from the original parts as published from December 1842 to July 1844, with the stab-holes visible; handsomely bound.
Dickens's biographer places Martin Chuzzlewit as marking "a great change in Dickens's conception of moral characteristics... For the first time Dickens begins to explore the contradictions and difficulties of the contemporary human world; these are no longer figures defined by a single characteristic or animated by the wilful principle of a 'humour', but ones who are seen to change with the changing world, to live and grow" (Ackroyd, Dickens, p. 392). Dickens wrote to a contemporary that "I think Chuzzlewit is a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories" (cited in Berard, Dickens and Landscape Discourse, p. 3).
Description
Octavo (214 x 133 mm). Late 19th-century tree calf by Mansell, twin red and brown morocco labels, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers, gilt edges.
Illustrations
Engraved frontispiece, vignette title page (£ sign not transposed, no priority of issue), 38 engraved plates by H. K. Browne. With the front wrapper of the original part XVII bound at front.
Condition
Complete with half-title. Joints and extremities neatly restored, front hinge split after free endpaper but holding firm, plates browned as often. A very good copy.
Bibliography
Kremers pp. 79-82; Smith I, 7.
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