For one year, from July 1844 to July 1845, Dickens and his family lived in Genoa. Based on letters to his friend Forster, Pictures from Italy describes the travels in the ‘good old shabby devil of a coach’ through France, and then to Genoa via Marseilles. While residing in an Albaro villa, and then ‘Palazzo Peschiere’, he also visited Venice, Naples, Rome (the Colosseum: ‘most stupendous and awful’), Pisa, and Pompeii, where he climbed Mt. Vesuvius and looked ‘into the flaming bowels of the mountain’. Conscious of charges of anti-Catholicism, he reminded readers that Pictures from Italy was ‘a series of faint reflections – mere shadows in the water.’ Here are the first Bradbury and first Tauchnitz editions of 1846.

[Page 10 and 11 of Charles Dickens's Pictures from Italy.]

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Pictures from Italy describes the travels in the ‘good old shabby devil of a coach’ through France, and then to Genoa via Marseilles. While residing in an Albaro villa, and then ‘Palazzo Peschiere’, he also visited Venice, Naples, Rome (the Colosseum: ‘most stupendous and awful’), Pisa, and Pompeii, where he climbed Mt. Vesuvius and looked ‘into the flaming bowels of the mountain’. Conscious of charges of anti-Catholicism, he reminded readers that Pictures from Italy was ‘a series of faint reflections – mere shadows in the water.’ Here are the first Bradbury and first Tauchnitz editions of 1846.]]> Charles Dickens]]>



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Pictures from Italy describes the travels in the ‘good old shabby devil of a coach’ through France, and then to Genoa via Marseilles. While residing in an Albaro villa, and then ‘Palazzo Peschiere’, he also visited Venice, Naples, Rome (the Colosseum: ‘most stupendous and awful’), Pisa, and Pompeii, where he climbed Mt. Vesuvius and looked ‘into the flaming bowels of the mountain’. Conscious of charges of anti-Catholicism, he reminded readers that Pictures from Italy was ‘a series of faint reflections – mere shadows in the water.’ Here are the first Bradbury and first Tauchnitz editions of 1846.]]> Charles Dickens ]]>



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For one year, from July 1844 to July 1845, Dickens and his family lived in Genoa. Based on letters to his friend Forster, Pictures from Italy describes the travels in the ‘good old shabby devil of a coach’ through France, and then to Genoa via Marseilles. While residing in an Albaro villa, and then ‘Palazzo Peschiere’, he also visited Venice, Naples, Rome (the Colosseum: ‘most stupendous and awful’), Pisa, and Pompeii, where he climbed Mt. Vesuvius and looked ‘into the flaming bowels of the mountain’. Conscious of charges of anti-Catholicism, he reminded readers that Pictures from Italy was ‘a series of faint reflections – mere shadows in the water.’ Here are the first Bradbury and first Tauchnitz editions of 1846.

 

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The death of his mother; the death of Thackeray; the finishing of Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings and The Uncommercial Traveller, and house hunting (57 Gloucester Place), were events that occurred around the time Dickens was writing Our Mutual Friend, his fourteenth and last completed novel. It was a difficult book to write. The Staplehurst rail crash of 9 June 1865 did not help. While ministering to the injured in this tragedy, Dickens managed to clamber back on the train and rescue the manuscript of Our Mutual Friend. He was not injured, but he did feel ‘quite shattered and broken up’. Our Mutual Friend was published in parts, the first selling 35,000 copies. There was a major difference to this work about greed: the illustrations were by Marcus Stone, rather than by ‘Phiz’. This is the first book edition.

[Frontispiece illustration by Marcus Stone and title page from Volume II of Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.]

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Even before finishing Pickwick Papers, Dickens had contracted himself to edit Bentley’s Miscellany and provide a serial story – all for the sum of £20 a month. In the second number began Oliver Twist, Dickens’s second novel. It was serialized in 24 monthly instalments between February 1837 and April 1839, with production faulting for a month due to the death of Mary Hogarth. In the Miscellany (as displayed), the story was set in ‘Mudfog’, later altered to ‘a certain town which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning.’ George Cruikshank provided the illustrations, including this memorable one of Oliver asking for more gruel.

[Page 105 from Charles Dickens's 'Oliver Twist’ Chapter 1 in Bentley’s Miscellany. Vol. I.]

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]]> Even before finishing Pickwick Papers, Dickens had contracted himself to edit Bentley’s Miscellany and provide a serial story – all for the sum of £20 a month. In the second number began Oliver Twist, Dickens’s second novel. It was serialized in 24 monthly instalments between February 1837 and April 1839, with production faulting for a month due to the death of Mary Hogarth. In the Miscellany (as displayed), the story was set in ‘Mudfog’, later altered to ‘a certain town which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning.’ George Cruikshank provided the illustrations, including this memorable one of Oliver asking for more gruel.

[Oliver asking for more. Illustration by George Cruikshank, opposite page 105 in Charles Dickens's ‘Oliver Twist’, in Bentley’s Miscellany. Vol. I.]

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]]> The heavy writing schedule that Dickens faced during the creation of Oliver Twist necessitated textual alterations to later printings. The most noticeable was the toning down of anti-Semitic references, especially to the character Fagin, based on the real-life criminal Ikey Solomon. Dickens had referred to Fagin as the ‘merry old gentleman’ or simply the ‘Jew’; in later editions, the mention of ‘Jew’ is much reduced. Oliver Twist is famous for revealing Dickens’s traumatic experience in the Blacking Factory. It not only contains unforgettable characters such as Mr Bumble, the Artful Dodger, Sikes and Nancy, but also his satirical swipes at the workhouse system, and the legal system that administered it. Here Cruikshank’s Fagin awaits his fate.

[Fagin in the condemned Cell. Illustration by George Cruikshank facing page 216 in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. 1st edition, 3rd issue.]

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George Cruikshank illustrated Dickens’s Oliver Twist. In this plate, Oliver Twist has just been shot by Mr Giles, the butler, in the bungled burglary of the Maylie home. Mr Brittles stands beside Mr Giles and Bill Sikes looks on through the window.

[The Burglary by George Cruikshank, frontispiece from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist; or the Parish Boy’s Progress. ]

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Hablot Browne’s cartoon on the top of the first part of Little Dorrit depicts a procession of decrepit, fool-like individuals, including a dozing Britannia. The image matches Dickens’s satiric attack in the book on the ruling class and their ineptitude. His famed Circumlocution Office highlights well civil service bureaucracy and incompetence. His strong feelings against imprisonment for debt also allowed use of the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison, where ‘heroine’ Amy Dorrit was born, and her delusional father William is the longest serving inmate. Arthur Clennam, a guilt-ridden ‘anti-hero’, is determined to rescue Amy from her plight. Originally titled Nobody’s Fault, Little Dorrit was the last of Dickens’s novels issued by Bradbury and Evans. Note Amy’s ‘sunny’ appearance on the title-page.

[Title page and frontispiece with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne from Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit. 1st book edition.]

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Hablot Browne’s cartoon on the top of the first part of Little Dorrit depicts a procession of decrepit, fool-like individuals, including a dozing Britannia. The image matches Dickens’s satiric attack in the book on the ruling class and their ineptitude. His famed Circumlocution Office highlights well civil service bureaucracy and incompetence. His strong feelings against imprisonment for debt also allowed use of the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison, where ‘heroine’ Amy Dorrit was born, and her delusional father William is the longest serving inmate. Arthur Clennam, a guilt-ridden ‘anti-hero’, is determined to rescue Amy from her plight. Originally titled Nobody’s Fault, Little Dorrit was the last of Dickens’s novels issued by Bradbury and Evans. Note Amy’s ‘sunny’ appearance on the title-page.

[Cover of the first part of Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit, December 1855. ]

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Household Words (1850-1859) was ‘conducted’ and founded by Charles Dickens in collaboration with his publishers, Bradbury & Evans. The publication featured articles dealing with social reform, emigration, and the British Empire, alongside novels in serial form. Works by Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Reade, and Dickens’s own Hard Times appeared over the years. Sales sat at around 40,000 copies per week (it was priced at tuppence per issue), although readership could triple for special holiday editions, and this figure does not account for the many working readers who would band together to buy a shared copy. All articles were published anonymously, yet the identities of featured novelists tended to be an open secret.

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The first number of Dickens’s periodical Household Words appeared on Saturday, 30 March 1850. This much-vaunted ‘comrade and friend of many thousands of people’ was the joint property of Dickens (one-half), publishers Bradbury and Evans (one-fourth), W. H. Hills, and John Forster (one-eighth each), and cost two pence per issue. Many of the 3000 articles were unsigned, and designed, as stated in ‘A Preliminary Word’, ‘to show to all, that in all familiar things, even in those which are repellent on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out.’ Flagging sales saw Dickens serialize Hard Times within its pages. He discontinued his ‘conducting’ of this weekly on 28 May 1859, incorporating it into All The Year Round.

[Heading of Charles Dickens's Household Words, Volume 1, page 1 dated Saturday March 30, 1850.]

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‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root everything else.’ So begins Dickens’s Hard Times (1854), a work with its subtitle: For These Times. With his satiric swipe at industrialism, James Mill’s Utilitarianism, and the national obsession with the ‘science’ of Political Economy (measuring everything by facts, figures, and averages), Dickens confirmed to his friend Carlyle, to whom the work was dedicated: ‘I know it contains nothing in which you do not think with me.’ There were no illustrations to Hard Times, Dickens’s shortest novel.

[Page 4 and 5 of Charles Dickens's Hard Times. For These Times.]

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]]> Great Expectations first appeared in 36-weekly parts in Dickens’s All The Year Round (1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861) and was not illustrated. However, the earlier and almost parallel first American printing was. Appearing in Harper’s Weekly (24 November 1860 to 3 August 1861) their Great Expectations carried 40 illustrations by John McLenan, the so-called ‘American Phiz’. Another point of difference was that the first American book edition (1861) carried Dickens’s pen-name ‘Boz’, which he had stopped using in 1844. Like the earlier David Copperfield, Great Expectations is strongly autobiographical, and mirrors many aspects of Dickens’s life. The ‘led/lead’ reference on display is just one bibliographical difference that helps distinguish between first, second, and later printings.]]> Charles Dickens]]>

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Great Expectations first appeared in 36-weekly parts in Dickens’s All The Year Round (1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861) and was not illustrated. However, the earlier and almost parallel first American printing was. Appearing in Harper’s Weekly (24 November 1860 to 3 August 1861) their Great Expectations carried 40 illustrations by John McLenan, the so-called ‘American Phiz’. Another point of difference was that the first American book edition (1861) carried Dickens’s pen-name ‘Boz’, which he had stopped using in 1844. Like the earlier David Copperfield, Great Expectations is strongly autobiographical, and mirrors many aspects of Dickens’s life. The ‘led/lead’ reference on display is just one bibliographical difference that helps distinguish between first, second, and later printings.

[Page 150 and 151 from Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, 1st edition, Volume III, Chapter X. ]

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Dickens’s George Silverman’s Explanation, a story in nine chapters, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly between January and March 1868, when Dickens was in America on a reading tour. This dark tale was one of the last pieces of fiction written by him. It carries a very bleak message: ‘the lesson that good produces evil, that virtue goes unrewarded, that hypocrisy goes undetected, and that we are all helpless prisoners of our environment and our personality’ (Harry Stone). Even Dickens was struck by it: ‘Upon myself, it has made the strongest impression of reality and originality!! And I feel as if I had read something (by somebody else) which I should never get out of my head!!’

[Page 3 featuring the Third Chapter of Charles Dickens's George Silverman's Explanation. ]

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Dickens’s George Silverman’s Explanation, a story in nine chapters, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly between January and March 1868, when Dickens was in America on a reading tour. This dark tale was one of the last pieces of fiction written by him. It carries a very bleak message: ‘the lesson that good produces evil, that virtue goes unrewarded, that hypocrisy goes undetected, and that we are all helpless prisoners of our environment and our personality’ (Harry Stone). Even Dickens was struck by it: ‘Upon myself, it has made the strongest impression of reality and originality!! And I feel as if I had read something (by somebody else) which I should never get out of my head!!’

[Title page of Charles Dickens's George Silverman's Explanation; edited by Harry Stone; illustrated by Irving Block]

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]]> Dickens must have been well satisfied with reader responses to Dombey and Son, which he began in Lausanne, continued in Paris, and finished in Brighton, Broadstairs and London. The first number sold 30,000, an increase over Martin Chuzzlewhit, but below sales of Nicholas Nickleby. He netted £2200 for the first six months, including his £100 per month payment from the publishers. According to the reckoning of his friend Forster, he had finally achieved financial security. Like Martin Chuzzlewhit, the book had a tight planned structure; unlike Chuzzlewhit, it dealt with the theme of pride.

[Title page and frontispiece (by Phiz) from Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son.]

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]]> Charles Dickens was the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth Dickens, née Barrow. Financial mismanagement resulted in John being imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison. One consequence of this was that the twelve-year old Dickens was taken out of school and made to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he spent ten hours a day, Monday through Saturday, pasting labels onto pots of blacking. This experience haunted Dickens for years, and many of his novels like Dombey and Son and David Copperfield reflect his concern for destitute children, orphans and abandonment. Here he is in happier times, with a portrait painted by E. Lawn, circa 1870. The usual flourish that ended most of Dickens’s letters is depicted opposite.

[Letter written by Charles Dickens in Charles Dickens Papers 1845-1881.]

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In 1850, the Times began publishing articles exposing the Court of Chancery, and the quagmire-like delays and proceedings inherent in the legal system. Here was Dickens’s opportunity. In Bleak House, his ninth novel, he attacked the abuses in the Courts, and continued his portrayal of London slums. Again ‘Phiz’ (Dickens’s ‘cher Brune’) illustrated the novel, which among others featured Esther Summerson, Mrs Jellyby, Krook (who dies by spontaneous combustion), Jo, and Sir Leicester Dedlock. The first instalment of 25,000 copies sold out and had to be reprinted; Dickens himself wrote: ‘It is an enormous success’. On display is the first printing of the first book edition, which sold for one guinea (£1 1s).

[Title page and frontispiece with illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne from Charles Dickens's Bleak House. 1st book edition, 1st printing. ]

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Dickens made two trips to America; the first between January and June 1842, and the second between November 1867 and April 1868. American Notes, a mix of sketches and travelogue, was the outcome of his first visit. Not gun-shy, Dickens made disparaging comments on their corrupt political system, slavery, their press, and even the habit of spitting in public. His advocacy for an international copyright agreement between Britain and the United States which would prevent the pirating of books further outraged some American readers. Despite adverse reviews, American Notes is an amusing read, especially with the dialogues concocted of people he met along the way. They are crafted in his own inimitable style.

[Title page and frontispiece from Charles Dickens's American Notes and Pictures from Italy.]

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Dickens made two trips to America; the first between January and June 1842, and the second between November 1867 and April 1868. American Notes, a mix of sketches and travelogue, was the outcome of his first visit. Not gun-shy, Dickens made disparaging comments on their corrupt political system, slavery, their press, and even the habit of spitting in public. His advocacy for an international copyright agreement between Britain and the United States which would prevent the pirating of books further outraged some American readers. Despite adverse reviews, American Notes is an amusing read, especially with the dialogues concocted of people he met along the way. They are crafted in his own inimitable style.

[Page 190-191 from Charles Dickens's American Notes and Pictures from Italy.]

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]]> Dickens made two trips to America; the first between January and June 1842, and the second between November 1867 and April 1868. American Notes, a mix of sketches and travelogue, was the outcome of his first visit. Not gun-shy, Dickens made disparaging comments on their corrupt political system, slavery, their press, and even the habit of spitting in public. His advocacy for an international copyright agreement between Britain and the United States which would prevent the pirating of books further outraged some American readers. Despite adverse reviews, American Notes is an amusing read, especially with the dialogues concocted of people he met along the way. They are crafted in his own inimitable style.

[Title page and frontispiece illustration by Arthur A. Dixon from Charles Dickens's American Notes.]

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Dickens made two trips to America; the first between January and June 1842, and the second between November 1867 and April 1868. American Notes, a mix of sketches and travelogue, was the outcome of his first visit. Not gun-shy, Dickens made disparaging comments on their corrupt political system, slavery, their press, and even the habit of spitting in public. His advocacy for an international copyright agreement between Britain and the United States which would prevent the pirating of books further outraged some American readers. Despite adverse reviews, American Notes is an amusing read, especially with the dialogues concocted of people he met along the way. They are crafted in his own inimitable style.

[Illustration by Arthur A. Dixon opposite page 80 from Charles Dickens's American Notes.]

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