A Christmas Carol by Dickens, Charles - 1843

London: Chapman and Hall, 1843. 3rd edition. Hardcover. Near fine. Bound in publisher's original red orange cloth with blind stamped covers and front cover and spine stamped in gilt. Four hand-colored plates by John Leech and four black and white wood engravings by W. J. Linton. A Christmas Carol has had an involved publishing history, much to the delight of bibliographical detectives. According to John Eckel, it was publishedon December 19th, 1843 and sold 6,000 copies on the first day. Before the end of the year, eleven days later, it was in the third edition, with the combined number of copies of the second and third editions being estimated at only two to three thousand copies. This means that the second and third editions were at least two to three times scarcer than the first although not as complicated with the three states and trial copies that distinguished the first edition. During the haste of the early stages of production Dickens was trying to determine exactly how he wanted the book to appear and experimented with the color of end papers with red, blue, green and yellow, eventually settling on yellow. On the title page he experimented with red, green and blue, eventually settling on red and blue as his preference. There were many textual errors corrected mostly in the second edition, although not entirely. Binding variants were yet another issue. This copy has the title page printed in red and blue with the words "Third Edition" printed in blue. The end papers are yellow. This copy has the heading "Stave I" which was eventually changed to "Stave One." An error on page 49, line 2, was uncorrected, remaining so in the third edition. It involved "and-bye ways," the hyphen being misplaced.