[DICKENS, CHARLES]. Christmas Books. London: Chapman and Hall, 1852.
Hardcover. First authorized collected edition, with a new preface by Dickens. Five parts in one. Leather-bound. Octavo (185 x 120 mm.), pp. [6], 266. Pagination continuous. English text in double column. Contemporary reddish-brown half calf, titles and banding in gilt to smooth spine, marbled book block edges, marbled paper-covered boards, plain endpapers. Inserted wood-engraved frontispiece after John Leech ["Mr. Fezziwig's Ball", the original design for the frontispiece of the first edition of A Christmas Carol]. Section-title to each story. The volume comprises: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. Printed by Bradbury and Evans. Condition: Binding tight and secure with the hinges intact. Extremities and covers a little rubbed. Endleaves a little dusty and spotted, contents otherwise rather clean. Some old inking recto frontispiece. Couple of leaves with small closed tears seemingly repaired. Bound without publisher's ads. Scarce.
Note: The first collected edition of the five Christmas Books, with a brief new preface by Dickens in which he describes his motivation for writing the Christmas books: 'My purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land'. Issued as part of Chapman and Hall's Cheap Edition of the Works of Mr. Charles Dickens (pirated collected editions had previously appeared in the United States). Each part originally published in separate book editions from 1843 through 1848. [Gimbel D5 notes. HBS 67902].
