[DICKENS, CHARLES]. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. London: Chapman & Hall, MDCCCXLIV [1844].
FIRST EDITION in book form, first issue following all points in Smith. This copy with the vignette on title-page with amount on sign post transposed to read "100£", seven studs on the trunk, the end of the preface dated "twenty-fifth June 1844", and 13-line errata. According to Smith "An earlier 13-line errata leaf exists with the same data that is found on the 14-line leaf; the setting was changed to 14-lines for a better balance." Leather-bound; hardcover; octavo (21.4 x 14 x 4 cm); xiv, [errata with 13 lines, verso blank], 624 pp. English text. Finely bound in full polished calf gilt by Morrell; all page edges gilt; grey endpapers; with forty etched plates including frontispiece and title-page vignette by Hablot K. Browne aka "Phiz." Condition: VERY GOOD. Binding tight and secure, the hinges and joints intact. Spine lightly sunned. Interior very well-preserved with some trivial spotting to the plates. Gift inscription neatly inked to front endpaper. An excellent copy.
Notes: First UK edition, (true) first issue in book form of Charles Dickens's sixth book, considered his last picaresque novel. Dickens's biographer places Martin Chuzzlewit as marking "a great change in Dickens's conception of moral characteristics. For the first time Dickens begins to explore the contradictions and difficulties of the contemporary human world; these are no longer figures defined by a single characteristic or animated by the wilful principle of a 'humour', but ones who are seen to change with the changing world, to live and grow" (Ackroyd, Dickens, p. 392). Dickens wrote to a contemporary that "I think Chuzzlewit is a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories" (cited in Berard, Dickens and Landscape Discourse, p. 3). Although Dickens wrote of his fondness for the project, it was the least commercially successful of his published works, resulting in a story alteration that sent his title character to America in an attempt to boost sales. It first appeared serially in 19th monthly parts (released between January 1843 - July 1844), with this book version being published upon its conclusion. Smith I, 7; Hatton and Cleaver pp. 183-212.
