Our Mutual Friend -
Charles DIckens, Marcus Stone (illustrator)
1865 - Chapman and Hall, London - First Edition
Handsomely bound first edition of Charles Dickens’s last complete novel and a glorious satire spanning all levels of Victorian society. Illustrated with forty engraved plates by Marcus Stone.
‘Our Mutual Friend centres on an inheritance – Old Harmon’s profitable dust heaps – and its legatees, young John Harmon, presumed drowned when a body is pulled out of the River Thames, and kindly dustman Mr Boffin, to whom the fortune defaults. With brilliant satire, Dickens portrays a dark, macabre London, inhabited by such disparate characters as Gaffer Hexam, scavenging the river for corpses; enchanting, mercenary Bella Wilfer; the social-climbing Veneerings; and the unscrupulous street-trader Silas Wegg. The novel is richly symbolic in its vision of death and renewal in a city dominated by the fetid Thames, and the corrupting power of money’. First Edition in book form, with slip tipped in after page xi. Both half-titles present.
Provenance : Faint contemporary owner’s signature to title page.
Reference: Walter Smith, Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth, I5. Hatton and Cleaver, Periodical Works of Charles Dickens, 275.
Thick octavo (binding size 21.2x14.5cm), pp. [2] xi [1] [tipped note slip] 320; vii [1] 309 [3]. Two volumes finely bound as one 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: Fine in fine binding. Ref: 112324 Price: HK$ 10,000
‘Our Mutual Friend centres on an inheritance – Old Harmon’s profitable dust heaps – and its legatees, young John Harmon, presumed drowned when a body is pulled out of the River Thames, and kindly dustman Mr Boffin, to whom the fortune defaults. With brilliant satire, Dickens portrays a dark, macabre London, inhabited by such disparate characters as Gaffer Hexam, scavenging the river for corpses; enchanting, mercenary Bella Wilfer; the social-climbing Veneerings; and the unscrupulous street-trader Silas Wegg. The novel is richly symbolic in its vision of death and renewal in a city dominated by the fetid Thames, and the corrupting power of money’. First Edition in book form, with slip tipped in after page xi. Both half-titles present.
Provenance : Faint contemporary owner’s signature to title page.
Reference: Walter Smith, Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth, I5. Hatton and Cleaver, Periodical Works of Charles Dickens, 275.
Thick octavo (binding size 21.2x14.5cm), pp. [2] xi [1] [tipped note slip] 320; vii [1] 309 [3]. Two volumes finely bound as one 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: Fine in fine binding. Ref: 112324 Price: HK$ 10,000