Oliver Twist.

DICKENS Charles (1838.)

£1750.00  [First Edition]

First edition, second issue. With illustrations by George Cruikshank. Three volumes. 12mo. [2], 331, [1]; [2], 307, [1]; [2], 315, [1] pp. Without half titles and advertisements. Twentieth century half brown morocco with marbled paper covered boards, spines with five raised bands outlined in gilt, second and third panels lettered and numbered in gilt, the rest tooled in gilt, top edges gilt. London, Bentley.

Oliver Twist was originally conceived as a satire on the new poor law of 1834 which herded the destitute and the helpless into harshly run union workhouses, and which was perceived by Dickens as a monstrously unjust and inhumane piece of legislation […] Oliver Twist developed into a unique and compelling blend of a ‘realistic’ tale about thieves and prostitutes and a melodrama with strong metaphysical overtones. The pathos of little Oliver (the first of many such child figures in Dickens), the farcical comedy of the Bumbles, the sinister fascination of Fagin, the horror of Nancy's murder, and the powerful evocation of London's dark and labyrinthine criminal underworld, all helped to drive Dickens's popularity to new heights.” (ODNB). 

In Oliver Twist Dickens evokes a Gothic response to urban settings, using the Gothic to imply “that fear and foreboding are integral elements of a society which esteems self or money more than people. The reader’s expected shudder when encountering these settings of Dickens was to be one of moral horror, in the reflection that the Gothic was not necessarily an imaginary fancy in cheap novel but a part of the very nature of normal society.” (Keech). 

The second issue, with Boz replaced by Charles Dickens to all title pages, the text on page 164, volume 3, is in the original state with “pilaster” rather than “pier” or “pedestal”, and the church plate being the final plate in volume 3. 

A very good set, corners and edges a little rubbed. 

Walter E. Smith, Charles Dickens in Original Cloth Part 1. 4. James M. Keech, ‘The Survival of the Gothic Response’, in Studies in the Novel. 

Stock Code: 241236

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