THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

London: Bradbury & Evans., 1850.. First edition, with first issue points including "screamed" remaining uncorrected on page 132 line 20 (later issues with "screwed"); the etched title page dated 1850; chapter XXVII begins on page 282 rather than page 283 as listed in the table of contents; p.16 line 1 and p. 225 line 22 both read "recal" rather than "recall"; p.19 line 39 reads "cha pter ; ut"; p.387 line 45 reads "coroboration" rather than "corroboration"; and p.472 line 37 has no closing of the quotation marks. Octavo. Handsomely bound for Henry Sotheran Ltd. in early twentieth-century half brown calf over red-brown linen boards, the spine with five raised bands and titles in gilt. Top edge gilt. Pale marbled endpapers. Illustrated with an etched frontispiece and vignette title page and 38 further etched plates by Halbot Knight Browne (aka 'Phiz'). Six-line errata page bound in after the list of plates. Lacking the half-title. A very good copy, the binding square and tight with a couple of faint scuffs to the spine. The contents with spotting to the plates (as is commonly encountered), a 1cm horizontal strip clipped from the top of the printed title page (presumably to remove a previous owner's name) neatly repaired/replaced with contemporary paper, a subsequent owner's name in ink to the printed title page, a little chipping and a minor paper repair to the blank fore-edge margin of p.97/98, and the odd mark to text pages, are otherwise in very good order. The first edition in book form of Dickens's major semi-autobiographical novel, originally issued in parts between 1849 and 1850, smartly bound for Sotheran's of London during the early twentieth century. "Copperfield received considerable critical acclaim and before long was widely held to be his greatest work. Undoubtedly it became for very many readers, then as now, his best-loved novel, an opinion in which Dickens himself coincided, calling it in a preface to the book of 1867 his 'favourite child'" (ODNB).