Browse Similar Items
BARNABY RUDGE.
(Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1842). 255 x 157 mm. (10 1/8 x 6 1/4"). 2 p.l., [i]-iv, 9-323 [1] pp. First American Edition in Book Form.
Publisher's blind-stamped brown cloth, smooth spine with gilt title and pictorial vignette. Woodcuts in the text after Cattermole, frontispiece, engraved title page, and ten copper-engraved plates, as called for. Podeschi A63; Wilkins, pp. 19-20. See also Day, History of English Literature, 1837 to the Present, pp. 174-75. Boards rather chafed, extremities with some wear (corners bumped and exposed), front joint slightly cracked at the tail, but the unrestored publisher's binding still entirely solid. Plates with faint marginal dampstain at the top and minor offsetting on facing page, but clean and fresh internally, and in general a perfectly acceptable copy of an insubstantially made book.
The first American edition in book form of Dickens' historical romance is offered here in its original publisher's binding. One of Dickens' two forays into historical fiction, "Barnaby Rudge" is a tale of forbidden love set among the 1780 anti-Catholic Gordon Riots, which ravaged London for seven days, leaving somewhere between 300 and 700 people dead. Day writes that "more impressive than any single character is the bestial swirl and wild destruction of the riots. This is probably the first English novel to make a mass movement the central figure rather than a background." The story was first published in Dickens' periodical "Master Humphrey's Clock," from February to November 1841, and later the same year was released in 19 parts by Lea & Blanchard in Philadelphia. The present edition was published immediately after the conclusion of the serialization. (ST16660cB)
Price: $75.00