The LIFE And ADVENTURES Of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY by Dickens, Charles (Boz) [1812 - 1870] - 1839

Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. Successors to Carey & Co, 1839. 1st US book edition (VanderPoel B125(2); cf. Edgar & Vail, p. 18; Gimbel A43, 'fourth copy'). Modern brown leather spine, gilt decorated & lettered, over original publisher's vertically-ribbed tan cloth boards. Modern cloth slipcase. Overall VG (usual foxing to text paper; plates uncommonly clean/faint period pencil pos to ffep).. i-ii, 3-5, vi - viii, 13 - 403 pp, double column of text. Printed by T.K. & P.G. Collins; Stereotyped by J. Fagan, Philadelphia. 39 (of 40) inserted plates after PHIZ redrawn [primarily] by Yeager. The frontis of Dickens not available when this copy was bound, so opposite the t.p., the publisher's tipped-in a printed slip stating: "On presentation of this slip, a copy of the Authorized portrait of Mr. Dickens will be delivered to the bearer, for Lea & Blanchard's illustrated edition of Nicholas Nickleby, which is now engraving on steel, and to be ready by the end of December. The purchasers of the numbers will receive the portrait in the New Work of Mr. Dickens, to be issued next year. / Philadelphia, November, 1839. 10" x 6-1/4". Signed in 6s.

This issue of the work, published the same month as the 20th Part, with a tipped-in publisher slip vice the frontis portrait, is quite Rare; is the first time we've ever owned such and we find mention of no other copy thus supplied aside from that noted in the VanderPoel Collection.