Little Dorrit, finely bound in full red Morocco by Bayntun-Riviere Charles Dickens Other Fiction,Other Fine Bindings

This is the first edition, first issue, in a magnificent fine binding by Bayntun-Riviere. The full red Morocco binding, in fine condition, features a hubbed spine with gilt-ruled compartments, gilt-decorated spine bands, and gilt-hatched spine ends. The spine features gilt-stamped title and author in two compartments and the date at the spine heel, four unprinted compartments each elaborately gilt-decorated. The covers are both gilt rule bordered, the front cover featuring a gilt-framed profile portrait of the author, the rear cover featuring the author s gilt-stamped facsimile signature. The cover edges are gilt-ruled. The contents are bound with all edges gilt, red and gold silk head and tail bands, and generous, triple gilt-ruled and decorated dentelles framing marbled endpapers."BOUND BY BAYNTUN RIVIERE. BATH. ENGLAND." is gilt-stamped on the lower front pastedown turn-in. In 1939, the year the Second World War began, the firm of George Bayntun acquired the Rivière Bindery. The Bindery has been in residence on Manvers Street in Bath ever since. A laid-in description dated "1981" indicates that this is when this copy, then "newly and choicely bound", was purchased from Henry Sotheran Ltd. Founded in York in 1761 and established in London in 1815, Sotheran s is one of the world s oldest bookshops. This book resided in the collection of the owner who purchased it in 1981, apparently untouched, for four and a half decades until acquired by us.The first issue contents are suited to binding, mildly age-toned but otherwise notably clean with all of the extensive illustrations present. The errata is present at p.xiv, as are the enumerated misprints: "William" for "Frederick" at p.317, line 27; "Rigaud" for "Blandois" at pp.467-474. English writer and social critic Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) is widely regarded the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Little Dorrit was published at the height of Dickens celebrity, just before he began performing public readings of his works to an adoring public, and shows the author s confidence in the public appetite for his social criticism. Little Dorrit is "the saddest of all his novels and also, according to Shaw, 'a more seditious book than Das Kapital' (Shaw on Dickens, 51), bringing together scathing criticism of the country's governing institutions (here represented by the all-powerful and all-pervading 'Circumlocution Office'), a vivid portrayal in the story of Mrs Clennam of the harshly Calvinistic version of Christianity that was so strong in Victorian culture, and a depiction of the public greed and gullibility that produces the frenzy of speculation associated with the activity of the swindling financier Mr Merdle, together with Dickens's deeper personal preoccupations about his childhood sufferings and his father's shaming imprisonment in the Marshalsea." (ODNB) "Fresh from lambasting the judicial system in Bleak House, Dickens here went after the machinery of government through his portrayal of the "Circumlocution Office", staffed entirely by a dynasty of Barnacles positively thriving on the business of chaos. As in A Christmas Carol, poverty and the social structures in place to keep the downtrodden low are again his true target." (Independent)As was custom with many Dickens novels, the publisher, Bradbury & Evans, originally serialized Little Dorrit between December 1855 and June 1857 before publication in this book form, swiftly following serialization.Reference: Smith I, 12