DICKENS, Charles, editor. The Pic Nic Papers. By Various Hands. London: Henry Colburn, 1841.
3 volumes, 8o (198 x 120 mm). 2 pp. publisher's advertisements at beginning and 8 pp. publisher's catalogue at end volume one dated May 1841; 2 pp. publisher's advertisements at end volume three. Three frontispieces and 11 etched plates by George Cruikshank, "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne), and Robert Jacob Hamerton (one or two loose, some margins browned, frontispiece volume one spotted). (Lightly browned, gathering H in volume two slightly sprung.) Original pea-green fine-ribbed cloth, covers decorated with blind border of double fillet surrounding elaborate design of acanthus leaves, spines blind-ruled in five compartments, gilt-lettered in three, publisher's imprint in gilt at foot, uncut and largely unopened (spines very slightly faded, extremities just touched, one or two tiny blemishes, front inner hinge of volume one just starting, slightly cocked). Provenance: J. Faulkener Whitfield (contemporary ownership inscription and library mark front paste-down of each volume); Comte Alain de Suzannet (bookplate; his sale Sotheby's London, 22 November 1971, lot 53); Kenyon Starling (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, with the error "publisher young" in Dickens' "Introduction" [p. iii], volume one printed by Cox and Son, volume two by G.J. Palmer, and volume three by Whiting. In addition to the introduction Dickens contributed The Lamplighter's Story (a revision of his unacted farce The Lamplighter) and edited volumes one and two. The proceeds from sales, a handsome £300, were given to the widow of Dickens' estranged publisher of the first volume editions of Sketches by Boz John Macrone, who had died leaving his family destitute in 1837. Eckel, pp. 143-145 (confusing the precedence of the printers of volume one); Yale/Gimbel B109. (3)