A Christmas Carol. by DICKENS, Charles - 1846: In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. With illustrations by John Leech. Eleventh Edition.

London: Bradbury and Evans,, 1846. A bright copy of the uncommon edition Small octavo. Original red vertically combed cloth, title and floral decoration to spine in gilt, and to front cover in gilt and blind, all edges gilt, pale yellow coated endpapers. Housed in a custom red cloth solander box with titles in gilt to spine and front board. Hand-coloured engraved frontispiece and 3 similar plates, 4 in-text woodcut illustrations by John Leech, half-title printed in blue, title-page printed in red and blue, 2 pp. of publisher's advertisements at end. Bookseller's ticket to front pastedown, faint contemporary ink ownership inscription ("'Helen' London") to front free endpaper. Extremities a little rubbed, couple of slight marks to cloth, small tear to lower fore-tip of front free endpaper with minor loss, rear hinge cracked but firm. A very nice copy in bright cloth. First Bradbury and Evans edition (although stated eleventh edition); very uncommon. It was first published in 1843, and this edition was first issued after Dickens fell out with Chapman and Hall over dwindling returns, and he had Bradbury and Evans publish separate issues of the "Eleventh" and "Twelfth" editions under their imprint. "The second, seventh, eighth, and eleventh (Bradbury and Evans title page) editions of the Carol are the rarest" (Smith). Gimbel A79, forty-first copy; Smith p. 28.