Master Humphrey's Clock.

London: Chapman and Hall,, 1840-41. A bright copy First edition in book form, in the original cloth, prone to fading and here bright. Master Humphrey's Clock - "the pinnacle of Dickensian Gothic" (Ray, p. 60) - united two novels together, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, an experiment unique in the Dickens oeuvre. Ray goes on to note that Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) "is in excellent form" and that George Cattermole's "wonderful clutter of antiquarian or architectural detail is well suited to Dickens's chosen subjects". The publication was issued in three forms: in weekly and monthly parts from April 1840 to December 1841 and in three-volume format on completion. Three volumes, tall octavo. Original purple vertical-ribbed cloth, spines lettered and decorated in gilt, covers elaborately blind-stamped, front covers with gilt clock motif, yellow coated endpapers, edges speckled red. Housed in blue quarter morocco box. With 3 wood-engraved frontispieces and prolific wood-engraved illustrations in the text, the majority by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), with contributions by George Cattermole, Samuel Williams, and Daniel Maclise. Recent bookplate of collector Peter Russell mounted to inside cover of box. Head of spines neatly repaired, cloth almost entirely unfaded, slight finger-soiling to title and sporadic very light foxing else contents clean: an excellent copy. Eckel, p. 67 ff; Smith, I, 6. Gordon Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914, 1976.