Martin Chuzzlewit (the life adventures of)

First edition, first issue, illustrated by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) with 40 figures including a frontispiece and an engraved title with vignette. On the frontispiece, 100L on the telegraph pole and 7 people in the mail coach. Errata with 14 lines of text and a blank verso. The plate facing page 70 was unfortunately not inserted in the volume. As with all his editions, Dickens worked closely with the illustrator.
Contemporary half glazed havana calf binding with corners. Richly decorated spine with raised bands, multiple roulettes. Red shagreen title label, second black shagreen title label. Combed edges. As with all Dickens editions the text is perfectly fresh and without foxing, and all illustrations with browning or entirely browned (due to tissue guards and the difference in paper acidity). Small dark stains on the leather of the boards.
Handsome copy, well bound, condition quite rare for a contemporary binding of a Dickens novel.
According to the author himself, his finest work, "a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories" (letter to John Forster, 2 November 1843). Undoubtedly, among all the author's picaresque novels, his most humorous and satirical, in an even more mature conception of novelistic material and character complexity. The novel also contains a very dark and tragic part. It was judged upon reception as anti-American, Dickens having transposed into this work his feelings about American society. He had made a journey to the United States in 1842. The young nation is indeed written as arrogant and self-satisfied, entirely devoted to money.
The novel was adapted for silent cinema in 1912 and 1914 and recently for the BBC as a series.