Charles Dickens — The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick ClubLondon: Chapman and Hall, London ~ 1837
 
A dazzling first edition of Dickens’s debut novel, in a bespoke Sangorski & Sutcliffe binding with inset watercolor portrait of Dickens.
 
📖 Highlights ~ The 1837 First Edition and Dickens's very first novel, the book that launched his career. In a sumptuous binding by London's renowned Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Full crimson Morocco, with wide gilt foliate borders with green onlays, spine compartments decorated with alternating gilt busts of Pickwick and Sam Weller. Upper doublure inset with a Superb Original Watercolor Oval Portrait of Dickens to inside upper cover, a hallmark of Sangorski & Sutcliffe’s most luxurious commissions. The portrait is mounted with brass edges, ornate gilt and Morocco onlay borders with full Morocco doublures and black silk free endpapers. Illustrated with 43 plates with contributions by Robert Seymour (who died early in the project) and H.K. Browne ("Phiz"), whose illustrations became inseparable from Dickens's text. Plates issued in Smith's first state with early plates with just page numbers and lacking captions, later plates lacking both. (see photos) All housed in a custom red leather and cloth clamshell case with gilt titles and decoration to the leather spine and marbled interior ensuring protection and presentation worthy of the volume.
 
📐 Details 
8vo (220 × 140 mm), 609pp. All edges gilt. Neatly rebacked preserving original spine; minor fraying to silk of front free endpaper; bound without half‑title. Interior remarkably clean, with only occasional light spotting.
 
🔎 Issue Points
Mixed issue, as almost always, with numerous first‑issue readings noted by Smith and Gimbel. Includes: five‑line footnote on p. 9; “ruined wall” on p. 43; “S. Veller” uncorrected on p. 342; broken type in final “E” on p. 17; signature mark “E” on pp. 25 & 27; misspelling “Picwkick” in running title on p. 375, Page 400 line 21 reads "This Friends," among numerous others.
 
💎 Why Collectors Love It
This copy marries literary history (Dickens’s first novel, a cornerstone of Victorian fiction) with binding artistry (Sangorski & Sutcliffe’s gilt pictorial tooling and inset watercolor portrait). It is not just a book, but a showpiece — a rare fusion of bibliographic significance and decorative luxury.
 
References
Smith, Dickens in Original Cloth, I:3; Gimbel, Catalogue of the Dickens Collection, D5.