Charles Dickens

First edition, first issue of Dickens' murder mystery Bleak House.

• Charles Dickens (English).
• Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot K. Browne] (English).
• London: Bradbury & Evans, 1853.
• xvi, 624 [2] pages.
• Octavo.
• 40 engraved illustrations.
• All three typographical errors present in the first issue.
• Bound without half-title in contemporary tan half calf with gilt titles to black leather label on the spine, marbled paper over boards and all edges marbled.

Although many of Dickens’ most famous works are crawling with crime, it is just this title that can be firmly placed in the murder mystery category. Bleak House is essentially a classic whodunit, professionally solved, which became only the second entry (after Poe’s Tales) in the Haycraft-Queen cornerstone list of crime fiction. Dickens returned to crime fiction for his highly rated final story, the Mystery of Edwin Drood, but this was unfinished and the case unsolved...Within Bleak House, the author experiments with dual narrators and the story ranges from the dark and filthy Victorian slums to the landed aristocracy; Inspector Bucket is one of the earliest detectives to appear in fiction and was probably based on C.K. Field of the recently formed Scotland Yard. An essential mystery novel.