Dickens, Charles

3 volumes, 8vo, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ON THE DEDICATION LEAF OF VOLUME 1 ("Emile De la Rue | From | Charles Dickens | Fifth February, 1854"), recipient's ownership signature on front free endpaper, half titles, frontispieces by F.W. Topham, advertisements at the end of each volume, original violet-pink cloth, decorated in blind and gilt, marbled edges and endpapers, preserved in matching folding box, spines repaired, hinges of volume 1 repaired (with remains of tape), cloth slightly torn at head and base of spines, covers slightly worn and stained, some spotting to leaves

Emile de la Rue, authorial inscription; H. Lettenorier, later bookplate with ownership signature

Smith II: 10; variant binding as described by Gimbel in note 3 (fine rib-grained violet-pink cloth)

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing unless otherwise stated
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

On 4th December, 1853, Dickens wrote Emile de la Rue a long letter: "... I am going to send you, please God, from England, a Bleak House in its real original form. I don't know whether you have read my Child's History - which contains the Truth respecting certain English Kings, whom it has been thought a kind of religious gentility to lie about. I will send that too, though I have my doubts whether it may not have earned the honour of being taboo'd by the Infallible Church" (The Letters of Charles Dickens, volume 7, pp.220-21).

Dickens first met the Swiss banker Emile De la Rue with his wife Kate in Genoa in 1845, during the period when the author had transported his entire family to Italy for a year living abroad. The story of Dickens's intimate attachment to the banker's pretty wife ("an affectionate, excellent little woman", in the novelist's words), and the subsequent jealousy aroused in Kate by the author's mesmeric treatment of Mme De la Rue, is well documented by biographers: "In Genoa and elsewhere he became intensely involved in using, either directly or long-distance, the power of mesmeric healing he discovered in himself to alleviate the condition of Mme de la Rue, an Englishwoman who suffered great distress from hallucinations. This strange intimacy with Mme de la Rue caused Catherine considerable uneasiness, not surprisingly. Dickens's response was righteous indignation (eight years later, when he again met the de la Rues abroad, he wrote home to Catherine admonishing her that he thought it would become her now to write Mme de la Rue a friendly letter, which she obediently did)..." (Michael Slater, Oxford DNB)

In style, subject and composition, this book differed from all Dickens's other works. This is also the only example of Dickens dictating the text to Georgina Hogarth; chapters two and four only are in his manuscript. Chapters had appeared irregularly in Household Words between 1851 & 1853.