Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi with illustrations by George Cruikshank by Boz" [Charles Dickens] - 1838

London: Richard Bentley 1838, 1838. First edition, second issue. Two volumes. 12mo. (202x125mm). pp. xx, 288; x, 263. Maroon half morocco, marbled boards. Spine decorated in gilt. Top edge gilt. Some wear to corners but otherwise in near fine condition. Marbled endpapers. Ownership label of Henry Barnes, Trinity: Cam. on ffep. Bookseller's stamp of John Bumpus 350 Oxford Street on verso of ffep. 13 plates by George Cruikshank, 2 of them frontispieces and the last with the grotesque border. Edges untrimmed and with some tears where pages have been opened. Some toning to edges but otherwise a nice set in excellent condition. An early work of Dickens's which he fitted in around The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. It is a reworking by Dickens of Grimaldi's own memoirs as rewritten by Thomas Egerton Wilks. Wilks had made a bit of mess of the job and the publisher Bentley asked Dickens to rewrite and re-edit the material. Initially Dickens refused saying of the existing work: "It is very badly done, and is so redolent of twaddle that I fear I cannot take it up on any conditions to which you would be disposed to accede". Those conditions included a payment of £300 (about £24,000 today). Bentley agreed and Dickens produced the book in two months.