London: Merrill & Baker, 1900. First Thus. Edition des Bibliophiles. Limited to twenty-six lettered and registered copies (this copy being Letter “H,” Printed for Sadie Belle Lufkin). Thirty-two octavo volumes (227 x 154 mm.). Contemporary blue crushed levant morocco. Covers decoratively tooled in gilt in a floral design within a gilt single fillet border, spines decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments with five raised bands, gilt-dotted board edges, turn-ins decoratively tooled in gilt within an outer border of a gilt-dotted rule and two gilt fillets, red calf doublures, red watered silk liners, top edge gilt, others uncut. Partially unopened.

Elaborately illustrated with frontispieces and plates, including photogravures, etchings, photo-etchings, from the original illustrations by Frederick Barnard, Hablot K. Browne (“Phiz”), George Cattermole, George Cruikshank, Dalziel, F.O.C. Darley, Luke Fildes, John Gilbert, Edwin Landseer, John Leech, Daniel Maclise, J. Mahoney, F.W. Pailthorpe, Robert Seymour, Stanfield, F. Stone, Marcus Stone, and others, including fifty original watercolor drawings (“Aquarelles”) by “Kyd” (Joseph Clayton Clarke) of Dickens’s characters. Descriptive tissue guards.

Few writers in English have generated such sustained fame as Charles Dickens. A prolific novelist interested how science, technology, economics, and religion shaped human experience in the changing modern world, he deftly combined good natured humor and biting satire. The present is a near comprehensive gathering of his best loved works. Although the spines are uniformly faded to green and a few leaves are poorly opened, this set is in a spectacular binding. (Item #3597)