This is a second lot of Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, this one with the original monthly parts bound in book form, and the same print history as the previous lot. It was published in twenty monthly parts, from April 1836 to November 1837, with a one-month lapse in June 1837, when one part was put off by a death in Dickens’ family. All the parts were priced at one shilling, except for the last double issue, which was priced at two shillings, and the whole set of twenty parts was bound as nineteen because of the double issue at the end. There are five raised bands, with six gilt-ruled compartments and “Pickwick Club - Dickens” in gilt letters on a black panel near the top of the spine and “London 1837” in gilt on a black panel at the bottom of the spine; there are triple-gilt fillets on a calf cover, gilt dentelles and a note from 1767 about a “Good Dwelling to be lett at Pickwick, in the County of Wilts” on the marbled endpapers. The front wrapper of Part No. I is included near the beginning of the text and the rest of the original front wrappers are bound in at the rear, a Message to Sergeant Talfourd after the title page, then a three-page Preface, four pages of Contents followed by Directions to the binder, and the text, which is 609 pages long. There’s also a white slip about the death of Robert Seymour and several addresses by the author and the Chapman and Hall, the publisher, at the rear (the slip about Robert Seymour is dated April 27, 1836, the first address is dated December 1836, the next is an author’s address dated June 20, 1837 and was written at 186, the Strand; then a publisher’s address dated August 26, 1837, and a final publisher’s address dated September 29, 1837, from the Strand) and one leaf with the Pickwick Advertiser bound in at the rear and no other ads in the book, except for the addresses about the books by published by Chapman and Hall.In a few instances Dickens had to adjust his story to the plates which had been prepared for him, but typically he wrote an installment and the artist was obliged to illustrate what Dickens had written about. The story became more important than the illustrations, and that propelled Dickens to the top of the literary world.It still took time for Dickens to find the right illustrator for the novel. The first artist, Robert Seymour, provided illustrations for the first two monthly parts, then committed suicide; Robert Willam Buss illustrated the third installment, but Dickens did not like his work, so Dickens kept up the search for an artist he liked and finally settled on H. K. Browne, otherwise known as Phiz, who illustrated most of Dickens’ other novels afterwards.Again, Chapman and Hall did not expect the novel to sell well, so they printed only 400 copies of the first part and just 500 copies for the second monthly, then sales took off unexpectedly, and the publishers had to readjust their plans - they had to increase production to meet demand, and older plates were re-etched as the original ones wore out, which led to plate errors being made, some ads were cancelled and others added, then the suicide of Robert Seymour and the death of Dickens’ sister-in-law - all this meant there would never be a perfect copy of the first edition in the first state - too many changes and unexpected events, which made for lots of headaches trying to figure out how many errors there were in your copy of the Pickwick Papers - were your errors close to a first state edition, or were they printed and corrected later on?Remember, there are over 500 points of issue in the Pickwick Papers to find or discover, and no one has ever found a perfect copy in the first state. There are about fourteen or fifteen copies that come close, but no one has ever found the elusive perfect copy, so we’ll use John Eckels’ bibliography to sort things out as far as we can. In his book about the writings of Charles Dickens, Eckels came up with eleven points he considered essential for a copy of Pickwick Papers to be called “perfect”:1. All covers must bear the date 1836.2. Parts I and II must carry the words “With Four Illustrations By Seymour”.3. Part III the words “With Illustrations By R. W. Buss.” 4. Part I must have four plates by Seymour, signed, and not re-etched by “Phiz.”5. Part II must have three plates by Seymour signed.6. Part III must have the two plates signed “Drawn and etched by R.W. Buss” and the page numbers.7. Part IV has the two plates indistinctly signed “Nemo” and not “Phiz”.8. Parts II, III, X, and XV must have the addresses by the author.9. Parts XVII, XVIII, and XX must have the addresses by the publishers.10. Plates in Parts I to XII must have no captions, only references to the pages where they were inserted; parts XIII to XX have neither titles nor numerical guides.11. On the vignette title page, the name “Weller” on the signboard over the door must appear with a “V”, and the signature “Phiz fecit” must surround the tablet at the bottom of the frontispiece. “Phiz fecit” means “Phiz made it.”The first point by Eckels is in our favor - all but one of the original front wrappers is dated 1836, the exception being No. XVII, which is dated 1837 in Roman numerals.But Parts I and II say “With Illustrations”, instead of “With Four Illustrations By Seymour”, and Part III only says “With Illustrations”, instead of “With Illustrations By R. W. Buss.” Part I has two of the four plates signed by Seymour, and Part II has all three plates signed by Seymour, as called for. Part III has both plates signed “Drawn and etched by R.W. Buss” along with the page numbers, as called for. We believe Part IV has the two plates indistinctly signed “Nemo” and not “Phiz” - they are definitely not signed by Phiz. Most of the addresses by Dickens and the publishers are bound in at the end, behind the original front wrappers. The plates in Parts I to XII conform to Eckels - there are no captions, only references to the pages where they were inserted, and Parts XIII to the end have no titles or page numbers, per Eckels. On the vignette title page, in Part XIX and XX, the name “Weller” on the signboard over the door has a “V” instead of a “W”, so it reads Sam Veller instead of Sam Weller, and “Phiz fecit” is at the bottom of the tablet on the frontispiece. I.e., there are many first state points of issue uncorrected here, but not all. All the plates are present as called for; the plate on page 89 has very light soiling at one edge, a few of the plates towards the end have offset on them from the text, but most of them are exceptionally clean and bright, with no browning at all. The text is very clean as well, with light offset on a couple of them from the plates, but overall a very clean edition of the Pickwick Papers.The boards measure 9 x 6 1/8 in. wide, the front covers of the original wrappers in back are very clean, especially after being well hidden for over a century, there are a couple of hard-to-see scratches on the covers, with tender joints along the front edge of the spine. So an attractive set, with some first edition first state points, but still not the elusive perfect copy of Pickwick Papers which has every single point of issue Dickens enthusiasts are looking for. Perhaps it will turn up one day … one day … See The First Editions of The Writings of Charles Dickens by John Eckels, Their Points and Values, published in New York by Maurice Inman and in London by the Maggs Bros in 1932, and see A Bibliography of the Periodical Works of Charles Dickens by Thomas Hatton and Arthur Cleaver, published by Chapman and Hall in 1933.
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