DICKENS, Charles.

Great Expectations.

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be": First edition, second impression of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations; one of only 750 copies

London: Chapman and Hall, 1861.

$15,000.00

In Stock Item Number: RRB-149547

Custom Clamshell Box (+$450)

* Custom Clamshell Boxes are hand made by the Harcourt Bindery upon request and take approximately 60 days to complete

Add to cart

Ask a Question Shipping & Guarantee

First edition, second impression of Dickens' rarest book, one of only 750 copies. Octavo, three volumes bound in full polished calf with morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, triple gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt-ruled turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Scarce second impression of the first edition, with genuine first issue title pages. Vol. 1 with "recal" on p. 84, line 6; Vol. 2 with "their" for "her" on p. 162, line 21; Vol. 3 with "raving" for "staving on p. 37, line 25, etc. With the second impression points as noted in the Clarendon Press Edition, including Vol. I. with a faulty comma after man, p. 5, line 9; no full stop after "robbery" p. 42, line 5; Vol. II with no full stop affter "gloomily," p.187, line 16, etc. Bound without half-titles or advertisements. Only 1,000 copies of the first issue and 750 copies of the second were printed and that probably most of the first and more than half of the second (1400 copies in all) were purchased by Mudie’s Select Library. Eckel, pp. 91-93; Sadleir 688; Smith I:14. In very good condition. An exceptional set.

Dickens' penultimate novel, Great Expectations, was written in "the afternoon of [his] life and fame" (G.K. Chesterton). The novel contains some of Dickens' most memorable scenes, including its opening, set in a graveyard, when the young orphan Pip is accosted by escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. Although Dickens' contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as "that Pip nonsense," he nevertheless reacted to each fresh instalment with "roars of laughter." Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as "all of one piece and consistently truthful." During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales; when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it "a very fine, new and grotesque idea."