Dickens, Charles — Little Dorrit

Whitefriars, London, Bradbury & Evans, Printers, 1857. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. Size: Large 8vo 9" - 10. Little Dorrit was originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857, and this is the first edition bound thus in book form. Amy Dorrit is the youngest child of her family, born in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London to which her parents had been sent. Arthur Clennam, the second protagonist, recently returned from twenty years away, finds Little Dorrit; the two's predicaments satirize by revealing the Catch-22 of an English debtor's prison, where inmates cannot work off their debts for being imprisoned, but are imprisoned being in debt. This debtor's prison once housed Charles Dickens' own father. The novel features the fictional "Circumlocution Office." This is a particularly handsomely rebound exemplar (probably from the late-19th century, in full-calf leather) of the First Edition bound from parts of Charles Dickens' beloved Little Dorrit. Light brown end papers. Gilt-ruled panels, fleurs-de-lis at the eight corners. Paste-downs cracked front and rear, but still a remarkably sturdy, handsome copy. Minor scuffing on edges, minor toning mainly on edges of illustrations, tips bruised but not broken. Some foxing on frontis, else text clean, unmarked and brilliantly white interior. Dentelles along edges both exterior and interior. Frontispiece with tissue, vignette title page, title-page dated 1857, Dedication, Preface (three pp.) dated May 1857, four-page Table of Contents with three lines of Errata, then 1-625 pp. All in, an important, handsome addition to one's Dickens library.Member, I.O.B.A., C.B.A., and adherent to the highest ethical standards. . . . Good