Dickens, The Chimes, 1845, first edition

DICKENS, CHARLES

The Chimes: A Goblin Story. London: Chapman and Hall, 1845 [1844]

8vo (166 x 104mm.), first edition, 13 illustrations (including frontispiece and vignette title) by Maclise, Doyle, Leech and Stanfield, second state of the vignette title, advertisement for tenth edition of A Christmas Carol at the beginning, pale yellow endpapers, original deep red horizontally-ribbed cloth, uppers decorated in blind, upper cover pictorially gilt with design of seven goblins above six chimes, spine and upper cover lettered in gilt, all edges gilt, slipcase

A VERY FINE COPY OF DICKENS' SECOND "CHRISTMAS" BOOK. As Clare Tomalin comments it "was written with red-hot feeling and meant to shame the cruel and canting rich of the 1840s. Like the Carol, it looked at the condition of the poor in England, but with a directly political message, attacking the complacency of political economists with Malthusian ideas, magistrates who sentenced suicidal young women to prison or transportation, and landowners who enforced the Game Laws and toasted 'The Health of the Labourer' at their agricultural dinners while allowing the labourers to starve..." (Charles Dickens: A Life, p. 157). Although the title page is dated 1845 The Chimes was published on 16 December 1844.

REFERENCE:

Smith II:5

PROVENANCE:

Reginald Huth, bookplate and ownership signature ("18 June 1901")

Reginald Huth (1853–1926) was the brother-in-law of the great bibliophile Alfred Henry Huth.