Dombey and Son.
London: Bradbury & Evans, 1848.
8vo, (iii)-xvi, 624 pp. Etched frontispiece, vignette title page and 38 plates by H.K. Browne ("Phiz"). Lacking the errata leaf. Full tree calf with gilt armorial supralibros, sensitively rebacked but with subsequent damage to the backstrip label with the loss of a few letters of gilt, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers showing the shadow of a bookplate cleanly removed but present, contents near fine with browning to only a few of the plates and only occasional spots of foxing.
§ First edition in book form, an unusually bright copy. With all but three of Smith's many points (page entry for frontispiece and vignette included on list of plates, "f" present in "familiar" on p.70, page number present on p.431), Smith I, 8. Lacking the errata leaf but with all Dickens's errata uncorrected. The book contains "the first published example of a so-called dark plate, which was created by a machine process that tinted the etched plate and heightened its black-and-white contrast. The one dark plate in Dombey and Son is "On the Dark Road", p. 547. The smooth blending of light and shadow on this illustration vividly contrasts it with the other illustrations in the novel and is a fine example of the dark plate process" (Smith). Item #126019
Price: $950.00