Dickens, A Child's History of England, 1863, new one-volume edition, inscribed to Cornelius

DICKENS, CHARLES

A Child's History of England. London: Chapman and Hall, 1863

8vo (181 x 116mm.), new one-volume edition, illustrations by Marcus Stone, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ON THE TITLE PAGE ("Charles Dickens | November, 1864. To Katie Cornelius"), contemporary maroon morocco, spine in six compartments decorated in gilt, green morocco label, gilt illustration of the signing of the Magna Carta within wreath on upper cover, marbled endpapers and edges, some slight spotting at the beginning and end, minor wear to covers

A FINE PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by Dickens to the six-year old daughter of his and his wife Catherine's longtime housemaid Anne Brown. Anne Cornelius (neé Brown) was the highly trusted housemaid for the Dickens household, even accompanying the novelist and his wife during their voyage and visit to America between January and June 1842. Anne stayed with the family until her marriage to the French polisher Edward Cornelius in 1855, then returning in 1857, being retained by Dickens even after the novelist's separation from his wife Catherine the following year. Anne's only daughter Kate, to whom the present lot is inscribed by Dickens, was born on 26th July 1856. The novelist's high regard and affection for his "faithful servant" Anne and her only daughter is testified to in his will, where they are each left bequests of £19 19s (they are the second and third persons mentioned, immediately after the bequest to Ellen Ternan). It is also quite probable that Dickens contributed towards Kate's schooling, since, unusually for the daughter of a housemaid, she was educated at the North London Collegiate School, run by Frances Buss, the daughter of Dickens' illustrator R.W. Buss. Dickens' intensely anti-aristocratic and anti-monarchical A Child's History of England originally appeared in Household Words between January 1851 and December 1853; the first book edition was published in three volumes between 1851 and 1853.