The Chimes: A Goblin Story Charles Dickens Other Fiction

This is an exceptional copy of the first edition, first state of the second Dickens Christmas book, unrestored in the publisher s original illustrated red cloth. Condition, improbably, approaches near fine. The elaborately gilt and blind stamped red cloth is tight, clean, and strikingly bright, with vivid gilt on the front cover and spine, and no appreciable color shift between the covers and spine. The corners remain sharp and the binding overall shows only the most trivial soiling and scuffs. We note light shelf wear to the spine ends and corners, including a touch of fraying, and a very slight, barely noticeable forward lean. The contents are notably clean. We find no previous ownership marks. The gilt edges remain bright. Mild spotting appears substantially confined to the front free endpaper verso, the facing publisher s advert for A Christmas Carol, and the blank versos of the two vignette pages preceding the title page. Minor imperfections to the upper fore edges of the rear free endpaper and pastedown appear to be an artifact of the binding process. First state is confirmed by "CHAPMAN & HALL" printed within the bottom edge of the vignette title page illustration, above the names of the artist and engraver, rather than below. The binding is protected beneath a clear, removable mylar cover.Although the title page of The Chimes is postdated 1845, publication was on 16 December 1844.Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic, widely viewed as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. "In October 1843 he had the sudden inspiration of writing a Christmas story intended to open its readers' hearts towards those struggling to survive on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and to encourage practical benevolence, but also to warn of the terrible danger to society created by the toleration of widespread ignorance and actual want among the poor. The result, written at white heat, was A Christmas Carol: in Prose, published by Chapman and Hall on 19 December as a handsomely bound little volume which met with marked success. The first edition sold out by Christmas Eve. By 1844, the novella had gone through 13 printings. Myriad editions, as well as stage and screen adaptations, continue to accumulate, with no apparent slackening of pace or interest over time.Christmas Carolwas only the first and foremost of several Christmas-themed stories. Dickens eventually produced five Christmas books. The Carol s "more overtly political successor" The Chimes followed in December 1844, The Cricket on the Hearth in December 1845, and The Battle of Life in December 1846. Dickens s fifth and final Christmas Book, The Haunted Man, was published in December 1848. The Christmas books, particularlyThe Chimes, TheCricket, and theCarol, were the centerpiece of Dickens public reading tours in the 1850s and 60s. In The Chimes, the story centers around Trotty Veck, a poor ticket porter, whose outlook is converted from despair to hope by the spirits of the chimes on New Year's Eve.Reference: Smith II, 5; ODNB