Great Expectations
Chapman & Hall, 1861.
First edition with unqualified title pages, later issue of the text. 170x110mm. Three volumes, finely bound by Bayntun in recent full red morocco, with raised bands, gilt borders to covers and titles to spine. Gilt cartouche depicting Dickens in an oval frame to the upper cover and his signature embossed in gilt to the lower cover of each volume. All edges gilt. Washed and cut down, as is usual with modern bindings, but not affecting any text. A fine set in a handsome binding.
About 1000 copies of Great Expectations were bound for the first impression on 6 July 1861. Four further issues were bound up and issued up to 30 October 1861. These later issues usually carried altered title pages but "were probably printed at a single impression and published with altered title pages to imply and encourage a rapid sale" (Smith I, p.103). It is likely, however, that some later issues were supplied with unaltered title pages, either by the publisher or by Victorian book collectors. Research for appendix D of the 1993 Clarendon edition established 124 textual points distinguishing the five issues. In this set, volumes I and II correspond to the third issue and volume III to the second.
The book remains one of Dickens's most enduring works and is amongst the rarest of his first editions.
Stock ID: 34486
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