Dickens, Little Dorrit, 1857, first book edition

DICKENS, CHARLES

Little Dorrit. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1857

8vo (220 x 146mm.), FIRST BOOK EDITION, 40 illustrations by Hablot K. Browne including frontispiece and vignette title-page and EIGHT DARK PLATES, original olive-green fine-diaper cloth, covers stamped in blind with rectangular frame with scroll design in each corner, enclosing globe-shaped design at the centre, pale yellow endpapers, some spotting to plates, slight edge-wear to binding, hinges starting

A near fine copy of the first book edition of the third of Dickens' great triumvirate of novels published in the 1850s expressing his anger and great concern about the condition of contemporary England. Little Dorrit, which George Bernard Shaw called "a more seditious book than Das Kapital", is also perhaps the saddest of all his novels, and bears a strong autobiographical element remembering the author's childhood sufferings. In it Dickens expresses scathing criticism of the country's governing institutions (represented by the all-powerful "Circumlocution Office") and the strongly Calvinistic Christianity which so pervaded Victorian culture; it also memorably depicts the public greed, gullibility and frenzied speculation exploited by the swindling financier Mr Merdle. 

Little Dorrit originally appeared in nineteen monthly parts between December 1855 and June 1857. 

REFERENCE:

Eckel, pp.82-85; Smith I:12

PROVENANCE:

early ownership signatures on vignette title and title ("Joanna Apperly ___")