Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People.: With forty illustrations by George Cruikshank. A new edition, complete.

London: Chapman and Hall,, 1839. First complete edition of Dickens's first book, revised by the author following issue in two series over 1836 and 1837, and expanded with a further 13 illustrations by Cruikshank. Sketches by Boz collected together the short fiction of the young Dickens, first printed in various periodicals from 1833 to 1836. The Sketches were originally published by John Macrone in book form in two series: the first in two volumes in 1836, and the second in one volume in 1837. Together, they comprise Dickens's first book. While the part issue of Dickens's second book The Pickwick Papers was still ongoing (and proving a major success), Dickens and Chapman and Hall purchased back the rights to the title from Macrone. Chapman and Hall announced the present edition of Sketches, to be issued initially in parts, in August 1837 in the 17th number of Pickwick. They published the first number in November 1837, the same month that Pickwick concluded its part issue. Chapman and Hall's aim was thus to move their newly enlarged Dickens audience, swelled by the success of Pickwick, from subscribing to the parts of one work straight to another. They stressed that both the price, and the one-volume format on completion, would equal Pickwick. The edition was issued in monthly parts from November 1837 to June 1839, with sheets issued in book form on completion; this is a copy bound from the parts, with stab-holes. The edition is important both for its additional illustrations and for its textual revisions. Cruikshank's original illustrations for Macrone's edition were re-engraved and here supplemented by the artist with a further 13 new illustrations. The text was substantially revised by Dickens for this edition, including most importantly the re-arranging of the Sketches into a four-section division, which was kept through all his further editions and through to modern editions. Though Dickens revised the text again for the 1850 Cheap Edition, the text of this 1839 edition has continued to be used, including in Dennis Walder's frequently-reprinted Penguin edition, first published in 1995. Octavo (211 x 132 mm). Late 19th-century red morocco, spine lettered in gilt, gilt ornaments in compartments, lettered at foot "Cruiskhank 1839" (indicative of the book's interest for the commissioner of the binding), covers panelled in gilt and blind, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Frontispiece, vignette title page, and 38 other plates, all by Cruikshank. Bookplate of 20th-century collector Vyvyan Edwards, whose collection, chiefly of private press books, was sold at Christie's in 1966. Bound without half-title. Very light rubbing at extremities, frontispiece neatly reinserted at head, some browning to plates, more substantially to frontispiece and vignette title page. A handsome copy. Eckel pp. 13-14; Cohn, Cruikshank, 234; Kremers, pp. 69-74. John Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, 1904.