When Charles Dickens died in 1870, he was one of the most famous writers in the English-speaking world. His novels had been read by millions, issued in monthly parts, adapted for the stage and discussed far beyond the literary establishment. Their publication history was unusually complex. Dickens’s books appeared in serial and book form, often with illustrations, advertisements and changes made while publication was still under way. In surviving copies, those changes can sometimes be followed in remarkable detail.
A cancelled illustration, a revised title page, a changed advertisement or a correction in standing type can establish where a copy falls within the sequence of production. With Dickens, these surviving physical details can often help reconstruct the sequence in which particular copies or issues were produced.
From Boz to Dickens
Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. When he was twelve, his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea, and Dickens was taken out of school and sent to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory. He spent several months labelling pots of boot blacking, an experience that stayed with him and later found its way into his fiction.
His father was released later that year, and Dickens returned to school. He remained there until 1827, when he left formal education at the age of fifteen. He then worked as a clerk and taught himself shorthand before entering journalism. By the early 1830s he was working as a parliamentary and court reporter, a role that brought him into close contact with London and its institutions.
In 1833 he began publishing sketches of London life under the pseudonym “Boz”. The name was derived from “Moses”, a nickname for his younger brother Augustus. Dickens pronounced the name as “Boses”, which was then shortened to “Boz”.
In February 1836, the sketches were collected as Sketches by Boz and published by John Macrone in two volumes. It was Dickens’s first separately published book. The edition contained two frontispieces and fourteen etched plates by George Cruikshank, making the illustrations part of the book’s original identity.
The Pickwick Breakthrough — and Why the Parts Are So Important
In early 1836 Chapman & Hall asked the twenty-four-year-old Dickens to provide text to accompany sporting illustrations by Robert Seymour. Dickens quickly imposed a narrative on the project. Seymour died after only a few numbers; R. W. Buss briefly succeeded him, and Hablot Knight Browne, soon known as “Phiz”, then became the principal illustrator.
By the final double number in November 1837, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club had become a national success. Its monthly publication also created a physical record of the novel’s progress that remains important when assessing early copies.
The monthly parts brought together text, illustrations, advertisements and printed wrappers. As the publication progressed, these elements changed, allowing the sequence of early issues to be reconstructed.
Hatton & Cleaver and later authorities record numerous points across the text, plates and wrappers. Parts 1–3 are particularly demanding when assessing early issues. The wrappers, plates, advertisements and addresses all need to be examined together. The wrappers should be in their appropriate early states and dated 1836, while the plates should correspond to the correct early states for each part. Parts 1 and 2 contain Seymour’s plates; Part 3 is especially important because the two Buss plates were subsequently discarded and replaced. The original advertisements and publisher’s addresses can provide further evidence of issue and sequence.
A substituted advertisement or later plate state can therefore help establish that a part was issued later than another apparently identical copy. Restoration presents a separate problem: once an original wrapper or plate has been replaced or materially altered, some of the evidence used to establish its place in the sequence is lost.
Fine complete sets in the original parts typically exceed £50,000–£80,000 ($65,000–$105,000), with exceptional examples considerably higher. First-impression copies in book form that retain the earliest textual readings are rarer still.
Pickwick established the publishing format that would remain most closely associated with Dickens: a novel developing before its readers month by month, with text, illustration, advertising and physical production proceeding alongside one another.
Oliver Twist — The Fireside Plate
While Pickwick was still being issued in monthly parts, Dickens published Oliver Twist in Bentley’s Miscellany in February 1837. The three-volume first edition was then issued by Richard Bentley in November 1838, before the serial had finished.
The earliest copies preserve two important first-issue features. The first-issue title pages identify the author as “Boz”. Volume III contains George Cruikshank’s original final plate, known as the “Fireside” plate, showing Oliver with Rose Maylie’s family.
Dickens objected to the illustration and asked Cruikshank for a replacement. On 12 November he wrote to Bentley asking that no more impressions of the plate be taken than were necessary because it was to be cancelled. The replacement, “Rose Maylie and Oliver”, showed Oliver beside the memorial to his mother.
The title pages were also changed. The “Boz” attribution was replaced by “Charles Dickens”, and copies with the amended title pages and replacement plate were ready by 16 November.
The first issue is therefore defined by the combination of the “Boz” title pages and the Fireside plate. For a first-issue set, all three title pages should carry “Boz”, together with the Fireside plate in Volume III.
The sequence captures Dickens at a moment when his own name was becoming a commercial asset: Pickwick had made “Boz” famous, but by November 1838 Dickens was publishing under his own name, “Charles Dickens”.
First-issue sets in original cloth or contemporary bindings have typically ranged in recent years from £5,000–£15,000 ($6,500–$20,000), with examples retaining the Fireside plate at the upper end of that range.
David Copperfield — Priority as a Cluster of Evidence
By 1849 Dickens was publishing fiction in monthly parts and preparing for the public readings that would later become an increasingly important part of his career. David Copperfield appeared in twenty monthly parts from May 1849 to November 1850 and was issued in book form the same year.
Dickens later called the novel his “favourite child”, and its autobiographical elements draw more directly on his own life than those of any other Dickens novel.
The first book edition is identified through a group of textual and bibliographical points rather than a single defining alteration. These include the uncorrected reading “screamed” on page 132, rather than the later “screwed”, as well as pagination, chapter headings, the list of plates and other internal characteristics recorded by Smith and subsequent bibliographers.
The evidence reflects the mechanics of nineteenth-century printing. Corrections made during printing, together with changes to the type through repeated use, produced small differences that allow earlier and later impressions to be distinguished.
Strong copies in original cloth typically sell in the £3,000–£10,000 ($4,000–$13,000) range. Copies with significant provenance can command substantially more.
A Christmas Carol — Dickens Controls the Production
In the autumn of 1843, Martin Chuzzlewit was selling poorly, and Dickens began working on the idea for a Christmas story that could be written and produced quickly. He wrote A Christmas Carol within a matter of weeks.
Chapman & Hall published the book on commission, and Dickens took an unusually close interest in its physical production. The finished book had a red-and-blue title page, coloured endpapers, four hand-coloured etched plates and four wood engravings by John Leech, gilt edges and a decorative cloth binding.
Six thousand copies were ready for publication on 19 December 1843, and the first edition sold very quickly in the run-up to Christmas.
The earliest copies present a complicated bibliographical picture. The first issue is associated with the 1843 title page, the blue half-title, “Stave I” as the first chapter heading and the early binding identified by William B. Todd. The binding has approximately 14–15 mm between the relevant points of the blind-stamping and gilt wreath, with the “D” of “Dickens” unbroken.
Endpapers require particular care. Green endpapers appear in some of the earliest copies, while yellow endpapers also occur among the earliest states. The title-page colour scheme was changed during production from the proposed red-and-green to red and blue. Surviving copies therefore preserve several closely related states rather than a simple progression from “trial” to “standard”.
Presentation copies dated 17 December 1843 are among the earliest surviving examples. The book was a commercial success from the outset. Its elaborate production, however, made it expensive to manufacture.
Fine first-issue copies in original cloth have sold in recent years for £40,000–£100,000+ ($52,000–$135,000+); presentation copies have realised considerably more.
A Tale of Two Cities — Dickens at the Height of His Career
By 1859 Dickens had become not only a novelist but the editor and principal contributor to his own weekly journal, All the Year Round. A Tale of Two Cities was the first novel to appear in the new journal, beginning in April 1859, and was published in weekly parts before being issued in book form by Chapman & Hall later that year. Set against the French Revolution and divided between London and Paris, it was markedly different in structure and atmosphere from the expansive novels of Dickens’s earlier career.
The first book edition was issued by Chapman & Hall in 1859, with illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (“Phiz”). For collectors, the distinction between a first edition and a first issue is important. A copy can be a genuine first edition yet belong to a later issue, after corrections had been made to the sheets. The earliest copies are therefore identified not simply by the date and publisher, but by a group of surviving textual points.
The clearest point is on page 213, where the page number appears as “113” rather than 213. This error was corrected during production, making the misnumbered page an important indicator of the earliest state. Another identifying point occurs on page 134, line 12, where “affetcionately” appears instead of “affectionately”. The List of Plates provides a further check: first-issue copies have the signature letter “b” at the foot of the leaf. Taken together, these three points — “113” on page 213, “affetcionately” on page 134 and the signature “b” on the List of Plates — provide the standard textual evidence for identifying a first-issue copy.
The illustrations and preliminaries are also worth checking. The book contains sixteen plates, including the frontispiece and vignette title page, and collectors should ensure that these are complete and have not been removed or replaced. Unlike some Dickens first editions, there is no half-title called for, so its absence should not by itself be treated as a defect.
The serial publication creates a second collecting route. A Tale of Two Cities appeared in All the Year Round from 30 April to 26 November 1859, while the book-form edition followed later that year. The original book parts were issued as eight parts in seven monthly numbers, with their blue-green printed wrappers, plates, advertisements and inserted material. Complete sets with the original wrappers and advertising material are considerably more difficult to assemble than ordinary bound copies.
Condition then becomes decisive. Original publisher’s cloth, clean text and plates, sound hinges and an unrestored binding are all important when comparing copies, but the bibliographical state should be established first. A beautifully bound copy lacking the earliest textual points is not equivalent, from a collector’s perspective, to a first-issue copy retaining them. Conversely, a first-issue copy that has been heavily restored may be less desirable than a well-preserved copy with its original binding and complete contents.
For collectors, therefore, the hierarchy is quite precise: establish that the copy is the 1859 Chapman & Hall first edition; determine whether it retains the first-issue textual points; check the plates and preliminaries; then assess the binding, condition and completeness. In the original parts, the wrappers and advertisements become additional evidence of completeness and priority. It is this combination of bibliographical state and physical survival that makes A Tale of Two Cities particularly interesting as a Dickens first edition.
Great Expectations — Survival, Libraries and Type Damage
By 1860–61 Dickens was editing All the Year Round and living at Gad’s Hill. Great Expectations appeared weekly in the magazine from December 1860, while Chapman & Hall issued the three-volume first edition on 6 July 1861.
Only about 1,000 copies of the first impression were printed. Most were supplied to Mudie’s and other circulating libraries, where repeated use subjected them to considerable wear.
The surviving first-impression copies are generally found in the original violet wavy-grained cloth with yellowish-white endpapers and the relevant early textual points.
Margaret Cardwell’s collation in the 1993 Clarendon edition distinguishes five sequential impressions from standing type through a long series of type damage, dropped letters and minor textual variants.
Among the useful early indicators are the absence of an edition statement on the title pages and specific states of damaged or unbroken type, including the page-number “3” on page 103 of Volume III and the initial “i” in “inflexible” on page 193. These points allow individual copies to be placed within the sequence of impressions.
In recent years Sotheby’s has estimated £50,000–£70,000 ($65,000–$90,000) for a fine example in original cloth; exceptional copies have sold for £175,000 ($230,000) and more. Rebacked, mixed-issue and ex-library examples occupy a very different part of the market.
Market Dynamics
The market for Dickens first editions is relatively deep, but it is also highly selective. There is steady demand for the major novels, yet prices rise sharply when an early state is combined with strong condition and original features.
Scarcity is not always straightforward. A first edition may have been printed in substantial numbers, but heavy use, library circulation, rebinding and restoration can leave relatively few copies in desirable condition. This is particularly important for books such as Great Expectations, where the survival of early impressions is closely tied to their collecting appeal.
At the top of the market, competition is concentrated on copies that combine bibliographical importance with exceptional preservation and provenance. These are the copies most likely to attract specialist collectors and to command prices well above those of ordinary first editions.
Dickens in First Editions
Taken together, these books trace the changing circumstances of Dickens’s career without separating bibliography from biography.
Sketches by Boz belongs to the period when Dickens was moving from journalism into authorship, and its first edition records the beginnings of the author who would soon become a national figure. Pickwick marks that transformation and established the monthly-part format through which Dickens first reached a mass readership. Oliver Twist captures the moment when Dickens’s own name was beginning to replace “Boz”, while the changes to its plates preserve evidence of his increasing control over the physical form of his books. David Copperfield draws closely on Dickens’s own early life and shows how personal experience had become part of the material of his mature fiction. A Christmas Carol demonstrates how closely Dickens could involve himself in the design, illustration and production of a book, down to its paper, binding and coloured plates. A Tale of Two Cities reflects the later Dickens as editor and publisher as well as novelist, appearing first in the journal he controlled before being issued in book form. Great Expectations belongs to the final decade of his career, when serial publication, book publication and public performance had become parts of an established literary enterprise.
The surviving first editions preserve aspects of these changes in unusually specific forms. A title page can show when Dickens stopped using “Boz”. A plate can preserve an illustration he rejected. A binding can retain evidence of an early production state. Damaged type can establish the sequence in which impressions were produced.
Dickens’s bibliography is therefore inseparable from the history of publication. His first editions do more than establish the early forms of his books. In their different states and surviving forms, they preserve the decisions and changes through which those books reached the reading public.
