DICKENS, Charles. Christmas Books. With illustrated by Sir Edward Landseer, Maclise, Stanfield, F. Stone, Doyle, Leech and Tenniel. [HAND COLOURED COPY]

London: Chapman & Hall, 1869. pp. [viii], 465. Bound by Morrell in full tan straight-grained morocco. Covers framed by triple gilt fillets, spine divided into six panels by five gilt raised bands, title and author in gilt on red morocco labels in the second and fourth, year in gilt at heel, the remainder tooled in gilt to a centre-and-corner design. Fore-edge ruled in gilt with chain link roll; wide gilt dentelles; binders name in gilt at bottom, grey endpapers, brown and gold endbands. Occasional light foxing to prelims. Upper joint a little rubbed. A beautiful hand coloured copy in excellent condition.

Dickens was not quite thirty-two when the idea of the ‘Christmas Carol’ first occurred to him at Manchester. It was published just before Christmas 1843. It does not read like the book of a young man; still less like the book of an author who was suffering at the hands of the critics and at the misgivings of his publishers.
Worked at in the beginning only at odd moments won from another task, the story as it grew obtained a mastery over its author: “He wept over it, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself to an extraordinary degree, and ... walked thinking of it fifteen and twenty miles about the black streets of London, many and many a night, after all sober folks had gone to bed” – Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens. The story had an immediate success, and has never lost its hold upon the public. “Who”, said Thackeray “can listen to objections regarding such a book as this?. It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness.”
The first issue of this deluxe edition of Christmas Books with five hand-coloured etched plates and many hand-coloured wood-engravings in the text. The contents includes: A Christmas Carol; The Chimes; The Cricket on the Hearth; The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man.