Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress.

First edition, first issue of Dickens’s second novel, the immortal story of the workhouse orphan Oliver Twist and the first English novel to take a child as its central character. A first issue, with “Boz” on the title-pages and the suppressed “Fireside” plate. Octavo, three volumes bound in full twentieth-century polished calf gilt by Zaehnsdorf, red and green morocco spine labels, elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, top edges gilt, marbled endpapers, etched frontispiece to each volume and twenty-one further plates after George Cruikshank, half-titles to volumes I and II with advertisements to the verso and further publisher’s advertisements in volumes I and III. The “Fireside” plate, present here, was engraved by Cruikshank in haste when Bentley resolved to issue the novel in volume form before its serialization in Bentley’s Miscellany had concluded; Dickens saw the plates only on the eve of publication and objected to it, and Cruikshank duly replaced it, retaining the title “Rose Maylie and Oliver,” so that the original appears only in the earliest issue. In very good condition, with some minor offsetting and spotting and only minor rubbing to the bindings. A handsome set of one of the best-loved novels in the English language. Eckel, pp. 59-60; Gimbel A27; Smith I:4.