Cricket on the Hearth, The

London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846.. To have a Cricket on the Hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!"

DICKENS, Charles. The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1846.

First edition, with first state of "Oliver Twist" advertisement.

Foolscap octavo (6 3/8 x 4 inches; 163 x 102 mm.). [iv], 174, [2, advertisements] pp. Additional engraved frontispiece and pictorial title (by Maclise) with original tissue guard. Illustrated throughout in the text.

Handsomely bound ca. 1880 by Samuel Tout (stamp-signed in black on verso of front free endpaper). Full blue crushed levant morocco, covers decoratively ruled and bordered in gilt, spine with five raised bands elaborately decorated and lettered in gilt, gilt board edges, elaborate gilt turn-ins, light brown patterned imitation silk liners and endleaves, all edges gilt. A very fine example.

"Although the titlepage is postdated 1846, The Cricket on the Hearth was published on December 20, 1845." (Smith).

"Of the 14 illustrations in this Christmas book, seven were designed by John Leech; three by Richard Doyle; one by Clarkson Stanfield; two by Daniel Maclise; and one by Edwin Landseer." (Smith, p. 42).

John Peerybingle, a carrier, lives with his young wife Dot, their baby boy and their nanny Tilly Slowboy. A cricket chirps on the hearth and acts as a guardian angel to the family. One day a mysterious elderly stranger comes to visit and takes up lodging at Peerybingle's house for a few days...

Victorian binder Samuel Tout worked out of Nassau Street in Soho, London 1868-79. He then partnered with William Coward in a bindery in Whitechapel but in 1880 continued on his own in the same location.

Smith II, 6.