DICKENS, CHARLES
Great Expectations. London: Chapman and Hall, 1861.

3 vols. 8vo, publisher's violet wavy-grain cloth, original pale yellow endpapers, housed in custom cloth-backed clamshell case, gilt-lettered spine label, without catalogue (Smith notes some copies of all five impressions do not contain catalogues). First edition, fourth impression, published September 20, 1861, same year as the first.

See Walter E. Smith, p. 103 ("...the first five issues were probably printed at a single impression and published with altered title pages to imply and encourage a rapid sale...The genuine second edition was the one-volume 'Library Edition' which Chapman and Hall published in 1862..."). See Margaret Cardwell, Clarendon Press, Appendix D, all 127 variations called for in list D ("there is no warrant to treating the five impressions as distinct editions: no authorial revision distinguishes one from another; blatant errors of substance remain uncorrected; a few errors in accidentals are corrected...but many more remain.") Fourth impression has the smallest printing run of any of the five printings (500 on September 20).

Repair to spine ends and lower joints of boards; inner hinges strengthened; bookplates tipped in front pastedowns; intermittent light foxing.


Property from a Private Chicago-area Collection

Literature:
Smith I: 14; Great Expectations. Margaret Cardwell, ed. Clarendon Press, 1993; Patten, 1978; Carter, New Colophon, II, part 7, 1949

Provenance:
Alfred Paul Bay; J. Christian Bay, bookplates