DICKENS, CHARLES | The Adventures of Oliver Twist ... a new edition. London: Bradbury and Evans, January – October 1846

DICKENS, CHARLES

The Adventures of Oliver Twist ... a new edition. London: Bradbury and Evans, January – October 1846

10 parts, 8vo (8 13/16 x 5 5/16 in.; 224 x 135 mm). 24 etched plates by George Cruikshank, retouched by J. Findlay; some light browning to plates in parts 4, 9 and 10, lacking advertisement leaf in part 10. Original blue-green pictorial wrappers after Cruikshank; parts 5, 8, and 9 with substituted wrappers from other parts, back wrappers to parts 7 and 10 substituted from [?]Dombey and Son, front wrapper to part 10 in facsimile and partly split along spine, some chips at head and tail of spines, neat spine and cover edge repairs. In green morocco-backed box by Sangorski and Sutcliffe.

First edition, in original monthly parts

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

As noted by Hatton and Cleaver, "complete sets of the ten parts can, without exaggeration, be described as of the utmost rarity... The very scarcity alone, of the book in parts, gives added zest to the tracking down of copies, but many would-be owners are doomed to disappointment in their efforts to effect a capture, in face of the very limited supply available." Eckel notes: "Many collectors prize this issue very highly and consequently it is the more valuable of the Oliver Twists." 

Oliver Twist was first serialized in Bentley's Miscellany between February 1837 and April 1839, and first appeared in book form in November 1838. Astonishingly, Pickwick was only half completed when Dickens began the tale, and he started Nicholas Nickleby before it was finished. 

LITERATURE:

Eckel 62-63; Gimbel A38; Hatton and Cleaver 215-224

PROVENANCE:

Marquess of Queensberry (armorial bookplate to box) ⁠— Neville L. Fakes (his sale, Sotheby's London, 11 July 2002, lot 196) — Christie's London, 1 June 2009, lot 117