Bleak House -
Charles DIckens, Hablot Knight Browne (illustrator)
1853 - Bradbury and Evans, London - First Edition
A handsomely bound first edition of Dickens’ best and most popular works, described by Claire Tomalin (Charles Dickens: A Life) as a ‘masterpiece, with the best opening page and the richest plot, part detective story, part attack on the abuses of the legal system and sexual hypocrisy as he lays out the condition of England, moving from child workers to comfortable aristocrats’.
Wonderfully illustrated with 38 engraved plates and title page vignette by Hablot Knight Browne aka ”Phiz”.
Introducing Inspector Bucket, the first English fictional detective, who was probably based on C.K. Field of the recently formed Scotland Yard.
‘As the interminable case of 'Jarndyce and Jarndyce' grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.’ – from the Penguin Classics introduction. Although many of Dickens most famous works are crawling with crime, it is solely this title that can be placed squarely in the murder mystery category: 'Bleak House' is essentially a classic whodunit, professionally solved, which became only the second entry (after Poe's 'Tales') in the Haycraft-Queen cornerstone list of crime fiction. Dickens returned to crime fiction for his final story, the 'Mystery of Edwin Drood' but this was unfinished and the case unsolved.
Within 'Bleak House' the author experiments with dual narrators and the story ranges from the dark and filthy Victorian slums to the landed aristocracy. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. Dickens uses this case to satirise the English judicial system. Though the legal profession criticised Dickens' satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
First Edition in book form, first Issue, with all three typographical errors present: p. 19, line 6 - ‘elgble’; p. 209, line 23 - ‘chair’ instead of ‘hair’; and p. 275, line 22 - ‘counsinship’ instead of ‘cousinship’.
Reference: Walter Smith, Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth, I, 10. Hatton and Cleaver, Periodical Works of Charles Dickens, 275.
Thick octavo (binding size 21.7x14.5cm), pp. xvi 624 [2]. Finely bound by Frost and Co. of Bath, in full red niger morocco goatskin, twin gilt line bordered panels, spine decorated with single and twin gilt filet compartments, with gilt motifs and lettering, tooled edges, bands, and gilt ruled turn-ins, hand-marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Condition: Near fine, light scattered foxing to plates as commonly encountered, in fine binding. Ref: 112323 Price: HK$ 14,000
Wonderfully illustrated with 38 engraved plates and title page vignette by Hablot Knight Browne aka ”Phiz”.
Introducing Inspector Bucket, the first English fictional detective, who was probably based on C.K. Field of the recently formed Scotland Yard.
‘As the interminable case of 'Jarndyce and Jarndyce' grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.’ – from the Penguin Classics introduction. Although many of Dickens most famous works are crawling with crime, it is solely this title that can be placed squarely in the murder mystery category: 'Bleak House' is essentially a classic whodunit, professionally solved, which became only the second entry (after Poe's 'Tales') in the Haycraft-Queen cornerstone list of crime fiction. Dickens returned to crime fiction for his final story, the 'Mystery of Edwin Drood' but this was unfinished and the case unsolved.
Within 'Bleak House' the author experiments with dual narrators and the story ranges from the dark and filthy Victorian slums to the landed aristocracy. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. Dickens uses this case to satirise the English judicial system. Though the legal profession criticised Dickens' satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
First Edition in book form, first Issue, with all three typographical errors present: p. 19, line 6 - ‘elgble’; p. 209, line 23 - ‘chair’ instead of ‘hair’; and p. 275, line 22 - ‘counsinship’ instead of ‘cousinship’.
Reference: Walter Smith, Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth, I, 10. Hatton and Cleaver, Periodical Works of Charles Dickens, 275.
Thick octavo (binding size 21.7x14.5cm), pp. xvi 624 [2]. Finely bound by Frost and Co. of Bath, in full red niger morocco goatskin, twin gilt line bordered panels, spine decorated with single and twin gilt filet compartments, with gilt motifs and lettering, tooled edges, bands, and gilt ruled turn-ins, hand-marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Condition: Near fine, light scattered foxing to plates as commonly encountered, in fine binding. Ref: 112323 Price: HK$ 14,000