THE NONESUCH DICKENS by DICKENS, Charles (NONESUCH PRESS) - 1937-38

Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press, 1937-38. First Edition. Hardcover. Contents generally very clean, occasional light foxing mostly to endpapers. Sunning to some spines, marking or soiling to some covers. A Very Good to Near Fine and complete set. Twenty-four large octavo volumes bound in the publisher's linen buckram which varies in color throughout the set, gilt title on black leather spine labels, top edges gilt. Numerous plates, some in color, and text illustrations from the original steel plates and woodblocks. Printed on Worthy rag paper, imported from America, by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. Limited to 877 copies, the quantity determined by the number of steel plates and woodblocks available. The twenty-five volumes include a drop-back box containing the engraving "Greenwich Fair" by George Cruikshank with the original steel plate and a letter from the publisher Chapman & Hall attesting to its authenticity. Also included is The Nonesuch Dickens: Retrospectus and Prospectus and the pamphlet A Note on the Format, as well as a letter from the publisher to the original subscriber. The publisher Mitchell Kennerley believed the Nonesuch Dickens to be "the most interesting, the most satisfactory, the most enduringly beautiful, the most monumental and the most desirable collected edition of the works of any author I have ever encountered." Considered the most "complete and perfect edition to be put upon the market" by editor and Dickens scholar Arthur Waugh.