Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens, Early American Edition, Illustrated, 1848

Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1848. Illustrated by Gilbert & Gihon, after H. K. Browne. Early American edition. Octavo. Publisher's blind-stamped dark brown cloth, spine with gilt title and pictorial vignette. Frontispiece, engraved title page, and 38 wood-engraved plates. With a new archival slipcase. 

Presented is an early American edition of Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens. This printing was published in Philadelphia by Lea & Blanchard in 1848. It is in the publisher's blind-stamped dark brown cloth boards, with the spine decorated with gilt titles and a gilt pictorial vignette. The book features a frontispiece, engraved title page, and 38 wood-engraved plates by Gilbert & Gihon, after the original illustrations by H. K. Browne. 

Following the success of his early novels, beginning with The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club in 1836, Dickens experienced a significant change in his publishing arrangements during the 1840s. After a disagreement with Chapman and Hall over the comparatively disappointing profits from A Christmas Carol in 1844, he turned to publishers William Bradbury and Frederick Mullett Evans, whose firm had initially operated as printers before becoming the proprietors of Punch. Dickens published several of his Christmas books through Bradbury and Evans, including The Battle of Life in December 1846, and entrusted the firm with the serialization of his seventh novel, Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. 

Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son appeared in nineteen monthly installments between October 1846 and April 1848, with the final installment issued as a double issue. The parts generally contained three chapters apiece, although the twelfth number, published in September 1847, included four chapters, and the concluding double-issue, issued in April 1848, contained chapters 58 through 62. Each installment cost one shilling, save for the last installment which cost two shillings as a double-issue. For the story, Dickens collaborated with his longtime illustrator Hablot Knight Browne, better known under his pen-name Phiz, whose illustrations complemented the story’s extensive cast of memorable figures. 

Following the completion of serialization, Bradbury and Evans published the novel as Dombey and Son in London, 1848. The book was also published in America that same year, by several different publishers. As noted by bibliographer Leon Litvack, both the Philadelphia editions and the earlier New York edition were unauthorized. This reflects both the demand for the novel as well as the lack of international copyright protection available to British authors in the United States at the time. 

Dombey and Son was very well received in its time. An October 1849 review in North American Review wrote that “...[Dombey and Son] illustrates those peculiarities of his genius observable in [Dickens'] other works, with a little more certainty of touch in ideal delineation. It is a fresh creation of his unexhausted mind, in which the old manner is reproduced to introduce new matter. Here, as in his other novels, the characters are everything and the story nothing; but the characters are sufficiently original, various, and numerous to compensate for far greater defects of plot and design. Captain Cuttle, Bunsby, Sol Gills, Major Bagstock, Pinch, Toodle, Toots, Mrs. Chick, Susan Nipper, Lucretia Tox, Rob, the lady whose husband invested in the Peruvian mines, not to mention others, are personages whose acquaintance once made is never broken. The beauty and pathos of the work cluster around Paul and Florence, and in these exquisite creations Dickens has exceeded the previous promise of his powers.” 

CONDITION:

Very good+ condition. Early American edition. Octavo. Publisher's blind-stamped dark brown cloth, spine with gilt title and pictorial vignette. Gilt is bright and vibrant. Cloth with small stains, scratches, wear to embossing. Corners bumped. Rebacked, saving original cloth.  Interior pages with light toning, scattered foxing, and occasional stains throughout, but paper still presents as bright. Faint offsetting from frontispiece to titlepage. Frontispiece, engraved title page, and 38 wood-engraved plates by Gilbert & Gihon, after H. K. Browne, all accounted for. With a new archival brown cloth slipcase with an inlaid portrait of Dickens on the front. 

REFERENCES:

“Review of Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son. Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation, by Charles Dickens.” The North American Review 69, no. 145 (October 1849): 383–407.