The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of DAVID COPPERFIELD by Dickens, Charles - 1849

1849. the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery. With Illustrations by H. K. Browne. [Twenty Parts in Nineteen.] London: Bradbury & Evans, 1849-1850. Original pictorial light blue-green wrappers. First Edition in the original serial parts, issued monthly beginning in May 1849 and ending (with a double number) in November 1850; the same sheets were then issued in book form, using the preliminaries supplied in the last part, on 14 November 1850. COPPERFIELD was Dickens's most autobiographical novel, written in the first person; along with OLIVER TWIST and A CHRISTMAS CAROL, it remains one of his best-loved today.~This set has all the proper wrappers (no "substitute rear wrappers!"). It also has all but a few of the ad catalogues and single-leaf inserts which a "perfect" set might have. (Eckel says "the so-called 'slip' advertisements also present a puzzle. Apparently there was much juggling...".) Speci­fically: Part I lacks the "Theory of Musical Composition" ad at the rear; Part II has an extra four leaves of preliminary ads; Part VI lacks the Waterlow ad at the rear; Part VIII has the very scarce "Lett's Diary" ad with specimen pages, but the foldout is incomplete; Part XII lacks the "Ancient and Mediaeval Art" slip; Part XIII lacks the preliminary slip and the "Ladies Companion" slip; Part XV has some of the ads in duplicate; and Part XIX/XX lacks the "Lewis Arundel" leaf but has duplicates of other ads.~Condition is very good. A few wrappers have discreet repairs, either along the spine, at a corner, or along a fore-edge, but all present themselves quite nicely. The "Phiz" plates are quite clean, with less foxing or darkening than is usually the case.~COPPERFIELD was issued with fewer copies than most of Dickens's other serials of the period such as BLEAK HOUSE and LITTLE DORRIT; as Eckel wrote of COPPERFIELD eighty years ago, "Comparatively the printing was small and the parts were much read and roughly handled, so it is that fine, clean and unrepaired copies are difficult to procure." Eckel pp 77-78; Hatton & Cleaver pp 253-272; Podes­chi/Gimbel A121; Carr B220. Housed in a (worn) calf-backed clamshell case.