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Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
WITH ALS BY DICKENS ABOUT THE NOVEL DICKENS, CHARLES. Bleak House. 2 volumes. Engraved plates by H. K. Browne ("Phiz"); extra-illustrated with the insertion of additional plates, many colored. 8vo, black pebble grain morocco with gilt fillet and floral borders and spine compartments, by F.P. Hathaway (Boston), only minor rubbing to tips, joints, and spine ends; top edges trimmed and gilt; bookplates of Cornelia Otis Skinner. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853
first edition, an extra-illustrated set containing an autograph letter signed by dickens to his friend, the writer peter cunningham, mentioning celebrating the completion of bleak house with his publishers Bradbury and Evans, who visited him in France. Addressed "Dear Cunningham," 2 pages, folded 8vo, sheet, the second leaf inlaid to size on bound-in sheet, clean tear to lower center fold. Boulogne, 20 August 1853. Dickens also refers to a "wonderful likeness of La Trimmer" that he will frame for his home at Tavistock. Two years earlier, Cunningham played La Trimmer and Dickens, the character Lord Wilmot, in an amateur production of Sir Edward Bulmer Lytton's "Not So Bad as We Seem." But the circumstances of the lettter is not entirely clear. The set compiled and bound by Curtis Guild in 1883 with an additional printed title-page stating that it is "Extended by the Insertion of autographic letter of author, announcing completion of the story, and illustrations by Gilbert, Darley, Dalziel and other artists, collected from various sources in Europe and America, by Curtis Guild. 1883." Provenance: Curtis Guild collection to Alden S. Blodget to Cornelia Otis Skinner.
