Dickens, Charles.

12mo (163 x 103mm.), first edition, first impression, presentation copy inscribed by Dickens to his close friend W.C. Macready on New Year's Day 1844 ("W.C. Macready. | From his affectionate friend | Charles Dickens | New Year's Day 1844"), Todd's second issue, first state, with 12-13mm. between closest points of blindstamping and gold wreath on upper cover and the "D" of "Dickens" unbroken, with uncorrected text, engraved frontispiece and 3 plates coloured by hand and 4 woodcuts in the text all by John Leech, "Stave One" on p.1, red and blue title page, half-title and verso of title printed in blue, pale yellow endpapers, 2pp. of advertisements at the end, original cinammon vertically-waved cloth, stamped in blind and gilt, all edges gilt, preserved in quarter green morocco folding box, a few small light spots to text, minutest wear to corners of binding, otherwise a virtually pristine copy

William Charles Macready, presentation inscription to him by the author on New Year's Day 1844, the book dispatched by Dickens to Macready, then on tour in America, by Steam Packet: see Dickens's letter to Macready of 3 January 1844 ("I have sent you, to the charge of our trusty and well-beloved Colden, a little book published on the 17th of December, and which has been a prodigious success - the greatest, I think I have ever achieved. It pleases me to think it will bring you Home for an hour or two..."; The Letters of Charles Dickens. Volume Four 1844-1846, ed. Tillotson, Oxford 1977, p.12); the New York book collector Ogden Goelet, acquired after Macready's death in 1873; the American collector N.A. Kneirr, bought at the sale of Goelet's library, New York, 3 and 4 January 1935, lot 121 ("in superb condition"); anonymous American collector, acquired c.1982

Smith II:4; Calhoon & Heaney, Appendix III, "The Known Presentation Copies of the Carol", presentation copy no.16

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, when appropriate.
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"I have sent you, to the charge of our trusty and well-beloved Colden, a little book published on the 17th of December, and which has been a prodigious success - the greatest, I think I have ever achieved. It pleases me to think it will bring you Home for an hour or two..." (Dickens' letter to Macready referring to this copy, see below) 

One of the finest imaginable presentation copies of A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol was published on 19 December 1843. Dickens had begun inscribing copies for friends on 17 December (see Calhoun and Heaney) but perhaps no more magical association can be imagined for the author's classic and immortal work than this copy, inscribed to his loved and honoured friend William Macready.

There were ten pre-publication presentations on 17 December. Recipients included Samuel Rogers, Walter Savage Landor, Baroness Burdett-Coutts and Anthony Trollope. Oddly, even including the last of these (who was adored by Dickens's children rather than the author himself) "there is no pattern of friendship or association into which they fall" (Calhoun and Heaney, p.302). Dickens seems to have reserved later copies for some of his more intimate friends, such as John Forster (inscribed on 18 December), Thomas Beard (19 December) and, in the present instance, Macready (New Year's Day). In any case, since Macready was on tour in America, he would have waited until a convenient opportunity arose in which to send him a copy by Steam Packet (see below). The present copy is no.16 in Calhoun and Heaney's 1945 census.

The distinguished actor and theatre manager William Charles Macready (1793-1873), who dominated the English stage for more than twenty years and restored the status of the nineteenth-century English theatre, was one of Dickens's most intimate friends. They had been introduced in Macready's rooms by Forster on 16 June 1837, striking up an immediate rapport: their warm and trusting relationship continued unbroken until Dickens's death. In 1839 the author named his third child Kate (Katie) Macready Dickens after his friend, and when, having been "haunted by visions of America, day and night" he finally embarked on his first tour there in January 1842, it was Macready to whom he left care of his children during his and Catherine's absence.

As an actor Macready was best suited to the great tragic roles and showed immense intellectual ability in penetrating and expresssing the psychological nature of his characters. He enjoyed celebrated tenures at the Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres between 1837 and 1843, both as producer and actor. His career is all the more remarkable in that he overcame an intense dislike of theatrical life as a young man (his father, the Irish actor and manager William Macready, had been imprisoned for debt in 1808, as would Dickens's own father sixteen years later) and his business dealings were hampered by his passionate temper, which he himself acknowledged as "the stumbling block of my life" (Diaries, I, 507). Having made his valedictory appearance at Drury Lane in June 1843, as Macbeth, he set sail from Liverpool on 5 September 1843 for his first tour of America. This is why Dickens sent this copy of A Christmas Carol to him via their mutual friend, the lawyer and philanthropist David Codwallader Colden, residing at Laight Street, Hudson Square, New York (see Dickens' letter to Macready of 3 January 1844). After successful appearances in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans and Montreal he returned home a year later £5500 the wealthier. His second American tour, between September 1848 and May 1849, was less successful. The American actor Edwin Forrest held a grievance against him for alleged ill-treatment during his 1845 London tour, and, buoyed by a nationalist undercurrent sweeping the country following somewhat unfavourable accounts of America by Dickens and others, mounted a hostile campaign against his English counterpart, replicating his roles wherever possible. The campaign culminated in a disturbance at the Broadway Theatre, New York, on 10 May 1849, when between 17 and 20 rioters were killed by troops (see Michael Slater, Oxford DNB).

The various issues and states of A Christmas Carol have been argued over for generations, but the most comprehensive and cogent accounts are now generally accepted to be Philo Calhoun and Howell J. Heaney's "Dickens' Christmas Carol After a Hundred Years: A Study in Bibliographical Evidence," (published in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 39, Fourth Quarter, 1945) and William B. Todd's "Dickens's Christmas Carol" (The Book Collector, 10, Winter 1961), synthesised by Walter E. Smith in his bibliography Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth (Los Angeles, 1983). The present copy conforms to Calhoun and Heaney's first edition, second issue, and to Todd's first impression, second issue, first state (Todd argues that the location of the gilt wreath on the upper cover is the chief evidence of priority for the various issues, claiming that the brass for the wreath shifted slightly to the left during printing).