£1,700
Dickens (Charles) & Leech (John, illustrator), A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being A Ghost Story of Christmas, first edition, first issue, London: Chapman & Hall, 1843, blue half-title, title-page printed in red and blue, signature B supplied in facsimile (i.e. A Christmas Carol. Stave I.), collating: [viii], 166 (pp. 1-2 supplied in facsimile), [2] (publisher's advert), preface and contents leaves transposed, 4 hand-coloured etched plates, half-title, frontispiece and title-page repaired at their inner-gutters, otherwise typically toned in places and some spots throughout, evident signs of soiled handling, a handful of outer-margins with varying degrees of brown stains, but which never touch numbers or letters, original publisher's cinnamon cloth gilt, re-backed preserving some of the original spine and re-cornered, but now structurally sound, the closest interval between the upper-cover's blind-stamped border and gilt wreath equal to 15mm and its 'D' unbroken, the binding with further signs of wear and handling, all edges gilt, if somewhat uneven, original yellow endpapers, the recto pastedown of which has traces of green, both recto and verso inner-gutters of which have been repaired, ffep with contemporary/contemporaneous ink MS ownership inscription, 8vo, [Eckel pp.110-115; Smith II, 4; William B. Todd, in The Book Collector, Winter 1961, pp.449-454]
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