The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

First edition, bound from the original wrappers. With twelve illustrations. 8vo. vii, [1], 190, [2, publisher’s advertisements], pp. [Bound in at the back] the front page and advertisements to the original six monthly parts. Nineteenth century half calf with marbled paper covered boards, spine with five raised bands tooled in gilt, second panel lettered in gilt to black morocco label, the rest decorated in gilt, top edge gilt. London, Chapman and Hall.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood was initially planned to be published in eleven monthly instalments, but only six were completed before Dickens died of a stroke on the 9th June 1870. “It was to be a murder story, 'the originality of which was to consist in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man were the tempted' (Forster, 808). It was the culmination of Dickens's lifelong fascination with the demeanour and psychology of murderers and he was, his daughter Katey remembered, 'quite as deeply fascinated and absorbed in the study of the criminal Jasper as in the dark and sinister crime that has given the book its title'” (ODNB). 

A very good copy, corners and joints a little rubbed. The original wrappers bound in at the back trimmed by the binder with some loss to text.

Walter E. Smith, Charles Dickens in Original Cloth Part 1. 16. 

Stock Code: 241253