Dickens' Works "Autograph Edition" Illustrated, 30 Volumes, 1900.

DICKENS, Charles, [BROWNE, H.K. "Phiz," CRUIKSHANK, George, illustrators]. The Complete Works of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1900.

First Edition thus, AUTOGRAPH EDITION, of Charles Dickens's works; edited by Richard Garnett, “Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum.” Thirty (30) volumes, complete. Octavo (8vo). Finely bound in uniform three-quarter morocco with gilt-tooled spines, raised bands, gilt turn-ins and dentelles, marbled endpapers, and top edges gilt. Illustrated throughout with etched plates by H.K. Browne (“Phiz”), George Cruikshank, Marcus Stone, and others, including engraved vignette title pages and frontispieces.

Contents clean and fresh, no inscriptions. Several volumes retain unopened leaves, reflecting minimal handling since publication. Contents and plates complete. Top edges gilt; thick deckled pages with deckled fore and bottom edges; wide margins; marbled endpapers; frontispieces with tissue guards present. Bindings tight and firm. Many volumes with only light shelf wear and gently bumped corners; other volumes with chipping to spine heads and tails, with occasional darkening to leather at spine tails. Overall, a handsome Very Good set.

Issued by Dickens’s first publisher at the height of late-Victorian craze of Dickens collecting, the Autograph Edition presents the author’s major works in elegant, illustrated volumes: A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and A Christmas Carol, among others. At the time of publication, Dickens had become the defining novelist of the Victorian age, his characters and stories embedded in the cultural imagination of the English-speaking world.