Description
Three quarter blue leather over marbled paper covered boards. Raised spine decorated in gilt. This slim volume was orginally issued in fragile pictorial grey-green wrappers, which are now very scarce. The present binding is by Blackwell, with new marbled endpapers [to match paper on covers], and bound without ads and half- title as per usual. All edges gilt, 6 illustrations by “Phiz” [Hablot Knight Browne]. But for very mild, incidental rubbing to heel of backstrip a very fine copy, with text free from foxing and plates very clean. Inside front cover exhibits book plate of previous owner. This was the “second collection of ‘humerous’ papers by Dickens” as Eckel writes, the first being “Sketches of Young Gentlemen”, published two years earlier in 1838. A scarce early Dickens peice, in very nice condition. Podeschi B87; Smith II p.3-7; Carr B474; Eckel p. 106-7