Bleak House
Price: $6,000.00
Browne, H.K. Hard Cover. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853. First Edition. Very Good.
Illustrated with 40 plates by H.K. Browne ("Phiz"), including a frontispiece and vignette title page. First edition, with all of the textual first issue points called for by Smith; in variant first issue binding ("MDCCCLIII" in gilt to foot of spine). Publisher's olive green fine-diaper cloth, boards stamped in blind with decorative borders and a "lineal globe-shaped" design at the center, spine stamped in blind with three compartments containing heart-shaped decoration, gilt lettering, and pale yellow coated endpapers. Very good, with binding slightly cocked, heavy toning and light spotting to cloth, light wear to spine ends, small tear to cloth at left joint, corners lightly rubbed and bumped, contemporary "John Cheesment Severn" bookplate and small Cawthorn Booksellers ticket to front pastedown, contemporary envelope laid in, some corrections made in pen to text, and light occasional spotting to plates. Overall, a sturdy copy of this dark Dickens masterpiece, without any restoration. Smith I, 10. Often regarded as one of Dickens' finest novels, Bleak House follows the long-running Court of Chancery case Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, a complicated lawsuit that involves almost every class of English society, and heavily criticizes the moral shortcomings of the British judicial system. With Bleak House, illustrator Hablot Knight Browne continued his experimental use of dark plates, of which there are ten - a significant increase from the singular dark plates in his preceding two novels Dombey and Son and David Copperfield. Additionally, Browne continues the use of horizontal illustrations in Bleak House, another technique he began with Dombey, with almost half of the illustrations here being in this layout. Bleak House is a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone. Item #CD182
