Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. [In] All the Year Round, Vol. I, II, III. 1859

DICKENS, Charles (1812–1870); COLLINS, Wilkie (1824–1889); et al. All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. Volumes I–III. London: At the Office of All the Year Round, 1859–1860.

FIRST SERIAL APPEARANCES of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, together with the First Appearance of The Haunted House and the First British Appearance of Dickens’s Hunted Down. Octavo (8vo); iv, 624; iv, 568, 48; iv, 620 pp. Three volumes, complete. A consecutive run extending from Volume I, no. 1, dated 30 April 1859, through Volume III, no. 76, dated 6 October 1860. Uniform full olive cloth, spines lettered in gilt; not in the publisher’s cloth. Each volume retains its title page; with the ERRATUM slip. The separately paginated 1859 Extra Christmas Number is bound at the end of Volume II.

A Tale of Two Cities appears complete in 31 weekly installments, beginning in Volume I, no. 1, on 30 April 1859 and concluding in Volume II, no. 31, on 26 November 1859. Dickens inaugurated both the journal and his celebrated historical novel with the opening number. The same issue containing the conclusion of A Tale of Two Cities introduced Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White. The novel appears complete in 40 weekly installments, from Volume II, no. 31, dated 26 November 1859, through Volume III, no. 70, dated 25 August 1860. One of the foundational works of Victorian sensation fiction, the novel’s enormous popularity helped sustain the remarkable early circulation of Dickens’s new journal.

Also present is the First Appearance of The Haunted House, issued as the 48-page Extra Christmas Number for 1859 and bound at the end of Volume II. This celebrated collaborative ghost story includes contributions by Dickens, Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Procter, George Augustus Sala, and Hesba Stretton. 

Additionally, Volume III contains the complete First British Appearance of Dickens’s Hunted Down, published in two portions in nos. 67 and 68 on 4 and 11 August 1860. Inspired by real life crime and the poisoner Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the story is an important early contribution to the Detective Genre. 

Provenance: an 1861 ownership inscription from Bermingham Lodge, near Tuam, County Galway, Ireland.

Contents are generally clean and unmarked, with light age toning, an occasional minor mark, and the ownership inscription to a contents page. Endpapers and blanks renewed. Bindings sound and square. Cloth exceptionally well preserved, with slight fading to the spines and minor shelf wear. Overall Very Good.

References: Eckel, pp. 194–195; Gimbel E9–21.

[Attributes: First Edition; Hard Cover; Three-Volume Set.]