First edition, first issue with 'STAVE I' on page [1]. Original red-brown cloth with gilt vignettes on upper cover and spine and blind stamped border (Todd's first issue binding). Yellow coated endpapers and a blue and red title page dated 1843. All edges gilt. Author's pre-publication presentation copy, inscribed by Dickens to his close friend and godfather to his son, Walter Savage Landor, "Walter Savage Landor From his affectionate friend, Charles Dickens Seventeenth December 1843." Four hand coloured plates by John Leech, with four woodcuts in the text. A superb, fine copy, with just a few trivial spots to the upper cover. Internally perfect, a superb copy. Housed in a green, full morocco, lift-off slipcase.

An exceptional association copy, inscribed by Dickens to one of his closest friends and one of a very small number of author's copies, inscribed by Dickens prior to publication.
Walter Savage Landor was a poet, historical novelist, and political activist whose series, Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829) proved popular with readers, though he was perhaps just as well known for his lively personality as he was for his prose. Landor greatly influenced the following generation of writers and social reformers and soon formed an affection for and close attachment to the young Charles Dickens, who in turn was happy to absorb this doyen of literary London into his circle. Landor became godfather to Dickens' second son, who he had named after Landor.
As Dickens' fame grew, Landor remained a constant presence in his life, inspiring the character of Lawrence Boythorn in Bleak House (1852-53). In a letter to John Forster, Landor asked him to pass along a message to Dickens: "Tell him he has drawn from me more tears and more smiles than are remaining to me for all the rest of the world, real or ideal" (Forster, Landor, I: 409).
This one of a handful of copies, given to Dickens by his publishers prior to publication for presentation. Eight copies are known with the earliest presentation inscriptions dated 17 December 1843, all to Dickens' closest friends: Landor (the present copy), Mrs. Eliza Touchet, Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Albany Fonblanque, Samuel Rogers, Rev. Edward Tagart, Thomas Noon Talfourd, William Makepeace Thackeray. A further two copies, to Thomas Carlyle and John Forster, are dated the following day.
Dickens completed writing A Christmas Carol in November 1843 and determined to present it as a beautiful gift book. It was an instant success, reportedly selling all 6000 copies of the first edition on the first day of publication, almost single-handedly spawning a new genre of "Christmas literature". Buoyed by his success, Dickens wrote a further four Christmas stories each seeking to strike a blow for the poor, uneducated and repressed, but imbuing his message with characteristic humour and good cheer.
"it is rather as if Dickens had rewritten a religious tract and filled it both with his own memories and with all the concerns of the period. He had, in other words, created a modern fairy story. And so it has remained." - Peter Ackroyd (Dickens).

PROVENANCE: Walter Savage Landor (presentation inscription from the author); John Gribbel (noted book collector, bookplate to front paste down; his sale, Parke-Bernet, 1940); also sold at auction in 1947 (Parke-Bernet) and 1996 (Sotheby's NY).

Smith II 4

Stock ID: 45505