A Tale of Two Cities. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.A Tale of Two Cities

This is the first edition, first printing, first state, finely bound. The binding is contemporary half dark red Morocco goatskin, featuring a generous spine and corners with crimson cloth sides and double gilt rule transitions. The spine features gilt-decorated raised bands. The 2nd and 4th panels, respectively printed with the title and author, are bracketed by gilt rules. The 1st, 3rd, 5th & 6th panels are framed by double gilt rules with a central gilt device. Within gilt rule brackets, "1859" is printed in gilt at the heel. The spine ends are gilt-hatched. The contents are bound with gilt top edges, red, green, and gold silk head and tail bands, and marbled endpapers. Condition of the binding is very good, square and clean with sharp corners and only a hint of color shift to the spine. The rear joint is still relatively secure, but a bit tender, showing some splitting beginning at the ends and superficial flaking of the leather. The book is housed within a dark red buckram cloth slipcase.The upper left corner of the front free endpaper verso bears the binder’s stamp – "BOUND BY ROOT & SON". "The London bindery of W. Root & Son consistently turned-out excellent work, both on fine bindings, as here, and on trade bindings and sets. Packer lists the firm in business in Red Lion Square in 1899-1901, and the December 1942 issue of The Rotarian notes with regret that W. Root had been bombed out of their premises on Paternoster Row during the 1941 Blitz". (Credit to David Brass Rare Books)The contents are well-suited to the fine binding, notably clean and bright with no appreciable toning or soiling and no spotting. First state of the first printing is confirmed by all issue points identified by Smith (Part I, 13.), at pp. vii, 98, 134, 166, 213, and 238, including p.213 mispagination. We cannot verify issue points on the p.ix plate list because this volume was bound without it. There is no indication that it was excised; the omission seems either an original binding flaw or a casualty of the rebinding. The sole previous artifacts of previous ownership are both affixed to the upper center of the front pastedown – an original "Centenary Testimonial" stamp from the 1912 centenary of Dickens’s birth above a clipped and presumably facsimile Dickens signature. Two further incidences at the front pastedown require note. One is a small scar to the marbled paper at the lower left corner. Second, along the vertical length of the front pastedown gutter there is what appears to be a thin strip of Japanese tissue paper, which might notionally be a reinforcement, but in this case seems entirely unnecessary, as the front joint is manifestly secure both internally and externally.H. K. Browne ("Phiz") prepared 16 illustrations for A Tale of Two Cities, including the frontispiece and the vignette title page. Of note, it was the final work which Phiz illustrated for Dickens – a collaboration which spanned 23 years and 10 major novels. All 16 illustrations are present in this copy.As was custom with many Dickens novels, A Tale of Two Cities was serialized (in eight monthly parts, spanning 30 April to 26 November 1859) before publication here, in book form, on 21 November 1859. English writer and social critic Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. A Tale of Two Cities was his second historical novel after Barnaby Rudge. "In this novel, the second half of which takes place during the French Revolution, Dickens set himself the task… 'of making a picturesque story, rising in every chapter with characters true to nature, but whom the story itself should express, more than they should express themselves, by dialogue', glossed by Forster as meaning that Dickens would be relying 'less upon character than upon incident' (Forster, 730, 731). In its tightly organized and highly romantic melodrama and the near-absence of typical ‘Dickensian’ humour and humorous characters, A Tale of Two Cities.…