DICKENS, CHARLES. Pictures from Italy. London: Published for the Author, by Bradbury & Evans 1846. Small 8vo, original blue cloth, blocked in blind, spine gilt-lettered, endpapers cracked at inner hinges; morocco and silk lined morocco gilt folding case. FIRST EDITION, four woodcuts after Samuel Palmer, PRESENTATION COPY TO LADY BLESSINGTON, inscribed by the author on the half-title in brown ink: "The Countess of Blessington. From her Friend Charles Dickens Devonshire Terrace Nineteenth May 1846." Pictures from Italy, travel sketches based on a year's stay in that country, was published near the end of May; the 19th was apparently the earliest day on which Dickens inscribed copies. Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, with the dandy Count D'Orsay, was a leader of the artistic and fashionable world of London. They gathered round them in their drawing room at Gore House the social and literary celebrities of their day -- Charles Dickens, first introduced to them in 1836, becoming one of their most intimate friends. Lady Blessington died in 1849 (the Count in 1852). Eckel, pp. 126-7; Smith II, no. 7.Provenance: Lady Blessington, bookplate.

DICKENS, CHARLES. Pictures from Italy. London: Published for the Author, by Bradbury & Evans 1846. Small 8vo, original blue cloth, blocked in blind, spine gilt-lettered, endpapers cracked at inner hinges; morocco and silk lined morocco gilt folding case. FIRST EDITION, four woodcuts after Samuel Palmer, PRESENTATION COPY TO LADY BLESSINGTON, inscribed by the author on the half-title in brown ink: "The Countess of Blessington. From her Friend Charles Dickens Devonshire Terrace Nineteenth May 1846." Pictures from Italy, travel sketches based on a year's stay in that country, was published near the end of May; the 19th was apparently the earliest day on which Dickens inscribed copies. Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, with the dandy Count D'Orsay, was a leader of the artistic and fashionable world of London. They gathered round them in their drawing room at Gore House the social and literary celebrities of their day -- Charles Dickens, first introduced to them in 1836, becoming one of their most intimate friends. Lady Blessington died in 1849 (the Count in 1852). Eckel, pp. 126-7; Smith II, no. 7. Provenance: Lady Blessington, bookplate.

Details

DICKENS, CHARLES. Pictures from Italy. London: Published for the Author, by Bradbury & Evans 1846. Small 8vo, original blue cloth, blocked in blind, spine gilt-lettered, endpapers cracked at inner hinges; morocco and silk lined morocco gilt folding case. FIRST EDITION, four woodcuts after Samuel Palmer, PRESENTATION COPY TO LADY BLESSINGTON, inscribed by the author on the half-title in brown ink: "The Countess of Blessington. From her Friend Charles Dickens Devonshire Terrace Nineteenth May 1846." Pictures from Italy, travel sketches based on a year's stay in that country, was published near the end of May; the 19th was apparently the earliest day on which Dickens inscribed copies. Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, with the dandy Count D'Orsay, was a leader of the artistic and fashionable world of London. They gathered round them in their drawing room at Gore House the social and literary celebrities of their day -- Charles Dickens, first introduced to them in 1836, becoming one of their most intimate friends. Lady Blessington died in 1849 (the Count in 1852). Eckel, pp. 126-7; Smith II, no. 7.

Provenance: Lady Blessington, bookplate.