Dickens, Charles--Forster, John.

8vo expanded to large 4to, first edition, 3 volumes extended to 6, extra illustrated with 738 items mounted into the volumes including 169 autograph letters and notes by Dickens, friends, and fellow writers, 15 clipped signatures, 120 illustrations of Dickens's work by H.K. Browne ("Phiz"), George Cruikshank, Daniel Maclise, John Leech, and Marcus Stone, 327 engraved portraits of Dickens's circle, contemporary and historical personages, and 111 views of locations relating to the writer's life, 17 illustrations hand coloured, all leaves in window mounts, in forest green morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe dated 1912, gilt rule borders with inlaid brown and red morocco floral cornerpieces, gilt centrepieces of facsimile signature on upper covers and monogram on lower covers, green morocco doublures with fillet and pointillé borders and floral cornerpieces with central panel inlaid with gilt and blind tooled brown morocco, each upper doublure with a hand painted cosway style portrait on ivory depicting dickens at a different period of his life (sizes ranging from 65 x 80mm. to 100 x 120mm.), silk endpapers, spines gilt lettered and tooled with five raised bands, top edges gilt, each volume housed in a blue morocco folding box cushioned in blue moiré silk, boxes sunned, some nicks and stains to individual letters 

a unique and magnificent copy of the authorised life of dickens by his friend John Forster, bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe during their glory years, and richly embellished with original letters by many of the eminent men and women known to the great novelist. 

The collection includes 6 autograph letters by charles dickens, to various correspondents, on social engagements, magazine contributions, and discussing American publishers (altogether 7 pages, c.1838-1862). There are large numbers of letters by writers and men of letters bound into the volumes, including: washington irving, w.s. landor (including verses on the death of Palmerston), thomas moore, thomas carlyle, harriet martineau, leigh hunt, wilkie collins, john ruskin, victor hugo, alexandre dumas (père), Bulwer Lytton, John Forster, Charles Dilke, Thomas Talfourd, W.C. Macready, W.H. Ainsworth, Percy Fitzgerald, Sydney Smith, Laman Blanchard, Samuel Rogers, Bret Harte, Charles Knight, Lord Francis Jeffrey, Lady Blessington, John Poole, G.H. Lewes ("...we have been waiting and waiting for the accounts of Middlemarch..."), R.W. Procter, S.C. Hall, Anna Maria Hall, Peter Cunningham, Thomas Hood, W.H. Wills, Sara Coleridge, Charles Reade (on a libel suit), G.A. Sala, Alexander Dyce (to J.J. Smith, on viewing a manuscript), the Count D'Orsay, John Payne Collier (on Elizabethan manuscripts), and Richard Owen. There are also letters by prominent publishers: John Macrone, Richard Bentley, and Thomas Longman.

Among the artists represented are: george cruikshank, david wilkie, j.m.w. turner (signed invitation), william holman hunt, George Cattermole (on the death of his son, 1863), Daniel Maclise, C.R. Leslie (to John Constable, 1835), W.J. Fox, John Leech, David Roberts, Charles Landseer, W.P. Frith, and Marcus Stone. actors include Charles Kemble, Robert Keeley, John Parry, Adelaide Ristori, and J.L. Toole.

Letters by politicians include: giuseppe mazzini (discussing political violence, 3 pages), daniel o'connell (arranging a meeting, signed "D"), robert peel, the duke of wellington, Lord John Russell, Sir Francis Burdett, the Earl of Shaftesbury, King Louis-Philippe of France, Dudley Coutts Stuart, James Emerson Tennent, Arthur Helps, Henry Brougham, Frederick Pollock, and Horace Greeley. Other miscellaneous public figures include: Charles Locock, Thomas Watson (on scurvy), John Richardson, and Lady Jane Franklin.

this set is among the most lavish bindings of dickens by the great fine binders of the early twentieth century. None of the works by or relating to Dickens bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe sold at auction over the last thirty years match this set. The Irwin Silver copy of Forster's Dickens (Sothebys New York, 26 April 2005, lot 49) was a similar but less lavish production.