24 volumes, including original steel-engraved plate in uniform cloth folding box, tall 8vos. Engraved title vignettes and plates from the originals, facsimile wrappers from the original parts. Original buckram in various colors, black morocco lettering-pieces gilt, top edges gilt, others uncut (a few spines very lightly sunned, some light spotting to folding box). Provenance: Buddenbrooks (booksellers' invoice laid in, dated February 1993).

LIMITED EDITION, one of 877 copies, AND ONE OF ONLY 11 SETS ACCOMPANIED BY AN ORIGINAL STEEL PLATE FOR AN ENGRAVED TITLE; THIS COPY WITH HABLOT K. BROWNE’S (“PHIZ”) PLATE FOR THE ENGRAVED TITLE TO DAVID COPPERFIELD. The original steel plate, numbered 673, entitled “Engraved Title” (ca 1849), is housed in a uniform cloth folding box with a letter of authenticity signed by the Deputy Chairman of Chapman & Hall and a framed proof impression from the plate.

PERHAPS THE MOST DESIRABLE COPY OF THE NONESUCH DICKENS, PRESERVING THE ORIGINAL STEEL PLATE FOR THE ENGRAVED TITLE TO DAVID COPPERFIELD—DICKENS’S FAVORITE OF HIS OWN NOVELS. David Copperfield held a unique place among Dickens’s works and was the novel for which he expressed the greatest personal affection. In his 1867 preface, looking back on the book nearly two decades after its first appearance, Dickens famously confessed: “Of all my books, I like this the best.” He continued by acknowledging that, like many parents, he had “a favourite child,” adding, “and his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD.” The novel was also his most autobiographical, drawing upon his traumatic childhood experiences, his early employment in a blacking warehouse, and his beginnings as a writer.

Hablot K. Browne (1815-1882), otherwise known as “Phiz,” had been Dickens’s principal illustrator for more than a decade when David Copperfield began serialization in 1849, their celebrated collaboration having commenced with The Pickwick Papers in 1836. For David Copperfield, Browne continued this close collaboration, supplying the illustrations as the novel appeared in monthly parts, including the frontispiece and engraved title.

VERY RARE WITH AN ORIGINAL STEEL-PLATE FOR AN ENGRAVED TITLE TO ONE OF DICKENS'S MAJOR WORKS: According to online records, we were only able to locate one other copy at auction (Heritage Auctions 2017, "Sketches by Boz"). See Prospectus for census, pp.55-78.

[With:] The Nonesuch Dickens. Retrospective and Prospectus. Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press, 1937. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Publisher's letter laid in.