1865 Our Mutual Friend

Description

First Edition, Illustrated, Publishers' Original Binding

The first edition of this work, first issue. Complete in two volumes, in the publisher's original cloth binding.

The first issue, with the three page postscript to the rear of Volume II, and with 'Pricipal' for 'Principal' to Volume II page 115, 14 lines up from the bottom. Eckel, 'The First Editions of the Writings of Charles Dickens'.

Illustrated with forty plates from English painter and illustrator Marcus Stone, evenly distributed across the two volumes. Collated, complete.

Retaining the original half titles.

Lacking the publisher's advertisements to the rear of volume II, and lacking the very scarce slip to the reader sometimes found bound in prior to page one of volume I.

'Our Mutual Friend' was the last novel Charles Dickens completed before his death in 1870. In it, he satirises society, with the plot following a young man who recently came into a fortune after his father dies, who's body is then found in the Thames. The money is then distributed to the naïve employees of the late father.