Our Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1865. First edition in book form, first issue of Dickens' last completed novel, with all first issue points present herewith, including the three-page postscript to the rear of volume II, and with 'pricipal' for 'principal' to page 115, 14 lines up from the bottom.

Two volumes, octavo. Original dark reddish-brown sand grain cloth. Spines richly ornamented with a gold design and lettered in gilt. Covers stamped in blind with a thin single-line border and a decorative equilateral rounded arch-frame embellished with a variety of leaves and a design of three flowers midway on each side of the arch and three in each of the top two corners above the arch. New, light-yellow endpapers (not original), but original flyleaves kept and incorporated within the binding. Volume two slightly taller than volume one, as pictured. Both volumes have been lightly restored, as described below, with new endpapers, re-backed with new cloth and original spines superimposed, and resewn by hand. Housed in a custom, open-spine clamshell slipcase covered in a burgundy cloth of a fine, smooth, woven texture, and lined with a burgundy suede.

With 40 wood engravings including frontispieces across the two volumes; four-page publisher's catalogue bound at the end of volume 1 (only pages 1-2 and 35-36 of the full 36-page catalogue bound in some copies of the first edition in book form; the rest of the pages absent), and four-page publisher's catalogue bound in following the final leaf of volume 2. Bound without the three-line slip tipped to page 1. Tissue guard protecting frontispiece in volume 1, no tissue guard in volume 2.

Light bumping to corners and a little wear to boards, heavy foxing to prelims, but only moderate throughout (mostly contained to extremities), a few thumb marks and a handful of lightly faded stains to a handful of pages, as pictured, without affecting legibility, light offsetting to title page and frontispiece, a few lightly turned corners on some pages, and a little nibbling to the extremities of some pages. Neatly pencilled inscriptions and bookseller embossed stamp (W. H. Smith & Son, 186 Strand, London) to flyleaves of both volumes. All plates present, as called for. Volume two slightly taller than volume one, as pictured. Both volumes have been professionally restored, stripped back to their original sections and resewn using the finest linen thread, given new endpapers (with the original flyleaves kept and incorporated within the binding), and re-backed with new cloth, saving the original boards and superimposing the original spines. Naturally, both bindings are tight with pages tightly bound, and lovely, rounded spines. A unique, open-spine clamshell slipcase has been commissioned to house the two-volume set, covered in a finely-woven burgundy cloth and internally lined with suede.

A really beautiful example of Dickens' last completed novel in original cloth, a novel that "had a mixed reception (the young Henry James' harshly dismissive review in The Nation is notorious), but its stock has risen dramatically in recent years and it is now generally regarded as one of his very greatest works" (ODNB). "The publication in cloth was in two volumes, a deviation from former methods. Thirty thousand copies were sold of the first number, "with orders flowing in fast", wrote Dickens two days after." (Eckel, 96).