[DICKENS, CHARLES]. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. London: Chapman & Hall, MDCCCXLIV. [1844].
FIRST EDITION, second issue in book form, with the frontispiece sign reading "£100", a 14 line errata, and the end of the preface dated "twenty-fifth June 1844". Leather-bound, hardcover, octavo (22 x 13.5 x 4 cm), pp. [xiv], [2] errata leaf, 624. English text. Finely bound in full calf gilt, marbled pastedowns and endpapers. Illustrated throughout by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) with engraved frontispiece, additional pictorial title and 38 other engraved plates. Condition: VERY GOOD. Binding tight and secure, the hinges and joints intact. Covers with some light shelf wear. Interior largely well-preserved with some light spotting and offsetting to the plates. Armorial bookplate to front pastedown.
Note: First edition, second issue in book form. 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). Smith I, 7; Hatton and Cleaver pp. 183-212.
