Great Expectations - photo 1
Great Expectations - photo 2

Great Expectations

Sold
$ 47 880
Auction dateClassic
06.10.2022 12:00UTC -04:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
USA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 813769
Lot 176 | Great Expectations
Great Expectations

Charles Dickens, 1861

DICKENS, Charles (1812-1870). Great Expectations. London: Chapman and Hall, 1861.



First edition, first impression of Dickens’s rarest novel. Only 1000 copies of the first edition were published, with most of these bought up by Mudie’s and other circulating libraries. This copy contains the earliest state of every point outlined in the detailed analysis found in the Clarendon edition of Great Expectations (1993, Appendices C & D). A full list of issue points is available with the condition report. As in the Lawrence Drizen copy sold in 2019, the third volume here contains the numeral "3" in the pagination on p. 103, and the "i" in "inflexible" on p. 193, which are sometimes missing in copies of the first impression of the third volume, indicating that the present copy is among the earlier printings of the first impression. This copy also has the early reading of vol. 3, p. 192 with "himself" and "very carefully" on separate lines. A very clean copy with all of the first issue points. Eckel pp.91-93; Smith 14.



Three volumes, octavo. (Without the 32-page publisher's catalogue at the end of vol. 3, some minor spotting at ends, a closed marginal tear at vol.2, N6, corner repair to vol.3, I2). Original publishers' violet wavy-grained cloth, blocked in blind, spines gilt, edges plain (some expert repairs at feet of spine, endpapers replaced at an early date with matching yellow contemporary paper, rubbing, spines and edges darkened, slight staining to cloth covers). Custom box. Provenance: “P.H.G.” (monogram bookplates) – Sir Brent Gration-Maxfield (ownership inscriptions dated 1974, his sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 9-10 Feb. 1981, lot 72).

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