Dickens’s long Chancery lawsuit and the lives caught up in it
Bleak House, first published in 1852–53, follows the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. This New York edition of 1891 has the illustrations of Dickens’s collaborator Phiz.
The story
Bleak House first came out in 1852–53. At its centre is Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a long-running lawsuit in the Court of Chancery, and Dickens follows its effects on the many lives that cross in Victorian England.
This later American edition was issued in New York in 1891 by Dodd, Mead, and Company, in three volumes, with illustrations by H. K. Browne, Dickens’s longtime collaborator, known as Phiz. The three are bound alike, with gilt-decorated spines, green leather corners and blue-and-white marbled paper on the boards.
They have been handled: the joints are rubbed, the spine ends and corners chipped, the edges worn and the pages toned.
Details
- Date
- 1891
- Publisher
- Dodd, Mead, and Company, New York
- Edition
- Three-volume illustrated American edition; title pages dated 1891
- Binding
- half_leather: Decorative half leather with brown gilt-tooled spines, green leather cornerpieces, blue-and-white marbled paper on boards; publisher binding status not confirmed.
- Condition
- Three matching volumes (I–III) shown, with brown gilt-tooled leather spines, green leather cornerpieces and blue marbled-paper panels. Visible scuffs, rubbed joints, spine-end and corner chipping, some worn edges, and age-toned page blocks. Title pages in all three volumes show New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1891; H. K. Browne illustrations are present. An Estes & Lauriat, Boston mark appears on an endpaper. Not a first edition. Pagination and total illustration count not collated; no unphotographed completeness guarantee.
