Barnaby Rudge. A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty.

DICKENS, Charles.

Published by London: Chapman and Hall, 1841

About this Item

First separate edition of Dickens' first work of historical fiction. The novel was written in conscious emulation of Scott and follows the anti-Catholic Gordon riots of 1780. It was first published alongside The Old Curiosity Shop in Master Humphrey's Clock (1840-41), the two works representing the "pinnacle of Dickensian Gothic" (Ray 60). The separate edition was bound directly from the unaltered sheets, with the pagination beginning at page 229. The pagination restarts at page 1 at the beginning of Volume III. Provenance: Raymond Briggs (1934-2022), the illustrator, graphic novelist, cartoonist, and author, with his posthumous book label. The winner of numerous awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal (twice), the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the Kurt Maschler Award, Briggs noted that "the whole point of illustration is that it is literary. If it is not, it remains a drawing only. Something must be 'going on' in the illustration" (Horne, p. 124). He is chiefly remembered for Father Christmas (1973), Fungus the Bogeyman (1978), When the Wind Blows (1982), and the perennial classic The Snowman (1978). Podeschi A62. Gordon Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914, 1976. Large octavo, bound without the publisher's statement. Frontispiece, wood engravings in the text by George Cattermole and H. K. Browne. Original brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, spine and boards blind-stamped, marbled endpapers and edges. Rubbed and bumped, wear to spine ends and corners, a few marks to boards, sporadic foxing, abrasion to p. 231, just touching text, a couple of marginal marks to contents: a very good copy.

Seller Inventory # 180410

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Barnaby Rudge. A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty.
• Publisher: London: Chapman and Hall, 1841
• Edition: 1st Edition