A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Dickens, Charles - 1843

1843. Leech, John. In Prose. Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. With Illustrations by John Leech. Second Edition. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843. 2 pp undated ads. Original rose-brown cloth decorated in gilt, all page edges gilt. "Second Edition." A CHRISTMAS CAROL was initially published in December 1843, and was a huge and immediate success. The first three editions were dated 1843 (though a few copies of the first edition were dated 1844), the fourth through tenth editions (though no "Eighth Edition" copy has ever turned up) were dated 1844, the eleventh and twelfth were dated 1845, and finally the thirteenth and fourteenth were dated 1855 and 1860 respectively. Through the "Ninth Edition," A CHRISTMAS CAROL was bound in the same rose-brown cloth as the first edition; beginning with the "Tenth Edition," it was bound in the bright red cloth that would be used for Dickens's four subsequent Christmas books. Technically these were all "impressions," not "editions," since they were all printed from the same original setting of type with the text comparatively unchanged (and include the same four hand-colored illustrations). This "Second Edition" does have numerous corrections in the text (enumerated by Smith), so technically this is the first corrected edition. This copy has been rebacked within its original cloth binding, retaining the original spine cloth and preserving the original yellow-coated endpapers. The spine is a bit darkened, but on the front cover the gilt remains quite bright; inside, the text and the four color plates, though showing minor foxing, remain in good shape. Now that nice copies of the first edition are priced in the $30,000-$70,000 range, many collectors instead seek copies of these later editions. Podeschi A79 ("25th copy"); Smith II No. 4, note 6 ("the second, seventh, eighth and eleventh... editions of the Carol are the rarest").