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Bleak House “No nineteenth-century novelist, not even Tolstoy, was stronger than Dickens,, whose wealth of invention almost rivals Chaucer and Shakespeare. Bleak House, most critics now tend to agree, is his central work… The Dickens cosmos, his phantasmagoric London and visionary England, emerges in Bleak House with a clarity and pungency that surpasses the rest of his work, before and after. No other novel in English invents so much…” –Harold Bloom, The Western Canon FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL PARTS of what is generally regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece. In original 20 parts (in 19, as issued); illustrated with 40 plates by Hablot K. Browne (“Phiz”). “The satire of Bleak House focuses on the obfuscations and delays of the court of chancery which result in widespread human misery and suffering, but the novel's complicated plot and centripetal organization bring into the picture a great cross-section of contemporary English society, from the aristocratic Dedlocks down to Poor Jo, a London crossings-sweeper, and reveal social injustice, stupidity, muddle, misguided and self-regarding benevolence, charlatanism, and gross irresponsibility pervading all areas of the national life. The court of chancery, ‘most pestilent of hoary sinners’, serves as the great emblem of this grim state of affairs. Writing at the height of his powers, Dickens adopts a virtuoso form of double narration, and the novel has since the middle of the twentieth century been widely acclaimed as his greatest work” (DNB). London: Bradbury & Evans, March 1852- October 1853. Twenty parts in nineteen. Octavo, original blue pictorial wrappers; custom box. Plates and text clean with only usual scattered foxing; wrappers in excellent condition with occasional soiling and a few repairs to edges. An exceptionally nice copy. $4000. On the ads: With most of the more than eighty ads and inserts found in the earliest issued parts, including the scarce booklet insert “The Village Pastor” in part XV and inserted slip in Part IX explaining an accident to a plate. With all ads for Parts III, V, VII, and XV. Without “Bleak House Advertiser” in Part XVIII and XIX-XX; without part of “Bleak House Advertiser” in Parts VI, IX, X, XII, XIII, XIV; without front “Household Words” slip in Part XI; without the following rear ads: 2 of 3 in I, 1 of 4 in II, 1 of 5 in IV, 3 of 5 in VI, 1 of 3 in VIII, 1 of 5 in X, 5 of 7 in XIV, 1 of 4 in XV, 1 of 3 in XVI, 2 of 3 in XVII, 1 of 4 in XIX/XX. |
DICKENS,
CHARLES.