Works of Charles Dickens. London (Chapman & Hall) 1874. Second Illustrated Library Edition. Thirty Volumes uniformly bound in attractive full contemporary calf, double gilt fillet, & blind roll borders, raised bands, profusely tooled gilt spine in panels, & each with three morocco title labels. A fine bright set.

With illustrated plates by George Cruikshank, Fiddes, ‘Phiz’ and others throughout.

” The library edition was created largely at the suggestion of Forster, who noted that although Dickens’ works were available in volumes in the Cheap Edition and in reprints of the series parts, there was no high-quality edition that would please the wealthy. Dickens eventually came up with the idea that an elegant edition could increase the prestige of his works. One difficulty was that the rights to the works were divided between Chapman and Hall and Bradbury and Evans. Consequently, the volumes contained the imprints of both publishers. With a dedication to Forster, the Library Edition was published in 1858/9 in 22 volumes of 7s 6d per volume. Titles included Pickwick, Nickleby, Chuzzlewit, Old Curiosity Shop, Reprinted Pieces, Barnaby Rudge, Hard Times, Sketches by Boz, Oliver Twist, Dombey, Copperfield, Pictures from Italy, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Christmas Books. The only illustrations were the frontispiece pictures. Between 1861 and 1874, this edition was reprinted in 30 volumes, with the addition of Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, The Uncommercial Traveller, A Child’s History of England, Christmas Stories, and Drood. The new edition included the covers as well as additional illustrations by artists such as Marcus Stone, John Leech and Clarkson Stanfield and became known as the Illustrated Library Edition.

Recognising the continued sales potential of Dickens’ works, Chapman and Hall published a prospectus for the second illustrated library edition in 1873, which they claimed contained all the works the writer wanted to preserve. This first well-printed edition, with specially cast letters and better paper than previous editions, was published in thirty volumes between 1873 and 1876 and sold at a high price of £15 for the time” (Oxford Companion to Dickens)