Lot Details
Lot 117
DICKENS, CHARLES Oliver Twist.
London: Richard Bentley, 1838. First edition, third issue, identifying the author as "Charles Dickens, Author of 'The Pickwick Papers,'" and with the "church" scene as the final plate in volume III. Three volumes. Contemporary brick-red cloth, gilt-lettered spines. 7 7/8 x 4 5/8 inches (19.8 x 11.8 cm); 331, [4]; [iv], 307; [ii], 315 pp.; frontispiece in each volume, 21 plates, half-titles, publisher's advertisements. Extremities a bit worn, occasional spotting including to plates, small contemporary initials inked to front pastedowns.
First edition (in book form), third issue of the Dickens classic, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. Bentley rushed the book to publication, even before its completion in periodical form. Dickens was unhappy with the scene Cruikshank chose to illustrate for the final plate in volume III (the so-called "fireside" plate), feeling it didn't bring the narrative-pictorial sequence to a satisfying conclusion, and in later issues it was replaced with the so-called "church" scene, showing Oliver with his aunt Rose Maylie (as here). Gimbel A28.
C Property from the Estate of an Upper East Side Collector
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