Item #122435 The Mystery of Edwin Drood. With Illustrations. Charles Dickens.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood. With Illustrations.

1931. London: Chapman & Hall, 193, Piccadilly, [April - September, 1870].

8vo., six parts, 36, [1]-32, [2], [4], [4], [8], [1 fold-out]; 20, 33-64, [4], [2]; 20, 65-96, [2], [1], [4], 8, [8]; 24, 97-128, [4], [4], [2]; 20, 129-160, [1], [4]; 18, 161-190, [2], [viii], [4], [4] pp., 14 engraved plates including title vignette and frontispiece portrait. Original printed blue wrappers with trade advertisements to inner sides as well as outside back wrappers, with a variety of publishers ads, and slips bound-in. Housed in a four-fold green cloth folder and quarter green morocco and green cloth slip-case with titling in gilt. A made-up copy with backstrips repaired and some ads missing as usual. Upper wrapper to part worn chipped along edges.

§ First edition in original parts, with 14 designs by Luke Fildes engraved on wood by Dalziel, C. Roberts, and others, and cover designed by C. A. Collins (brother of Wilkie Collins). “When Dickens died on June 9, 1870, he had completed only enough of his manuscript to make up six installments, leaving unfinished a work which had commanded the widest attention for its opening numbers, and which promised to be one of his most effective and popular books. Although only three parts had been issued prior to his death, publication of the work continued, and on completion with Part 6 of all available material, the vast army of readers was left high and dry as to ‘The Mystery’” (Hatton and Cleaver 373). Thomson 112. Item #122435

Price: $500.00

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