1914 Rare Book - Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

A particularly attractive early twentieth-century edition of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, preserved in a richly decorated blue publisher’s binding and complete with its dramatic engraved frontispiece, with a charming period Christmas greeting bookmark found inside the book and retained with the copy.

Author: Charles Dickens.
Title: Oliver Twist.
Publisher: London and Felling-on-Tyne: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.; New York: 3 East 14th Street.
Edition: Undated early twentieth-century edition, circa 1914, with printer’s code “6-14” at the conclusion of the text.
Language: English.
Size: 7.5 x 5 inches.
Pages: iv, 347 pages.
Binding: Very good original publisher’s blue cloth binding, elaborately decorated in blind to the upper board and spine with ornamental floral and geometric designs, with contrasting gilt title panels to the upper board and spine. Binding remains firm, bright and particularly attractive, with only light rubbing and minor signs of age and handling, as shown. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content throughout. Pages are clean and well preserved, with light age toning and occasional minor spotting consistent with age. With a Sunday School prize inscription dated 1920 to the front pastedown and a small period ownership label to the facing endpaper. A charming original Christmas greeting bookmark, decorated with flowers and a butterfly and bearing the words “A Happy Christmas and a Bright New Year,” was found inserted in the volume and is included with the book.
Illustrations: Complete with one black-and-white frontispiece illustration by W. Reynolds, depicting the dramatic scene captioned “Oh! God forgive this wretched man!” from page 343. Decorative illustrated initials appear at the openings of the chapters throughout.

Estimate: USD 180–200

The book: First published serially between 1837 and 1839, Oliver Twist was Charles Dickens’s second novel and remains one of his most enduring works. Following the orphaned Oliver from the workhouse through the criminal underworld of Victorian London, the novel introduced some of Dickens’s most memorable characters, including Fagin, the Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes and Nancy, while exposing the poverty, institutional cruelty and social inequalities of nineteenth-century England.

This handsome Walter Scott Publishing Company edition is particularly appealing for its richly decorated blue cloth binding, whose elaborate blind-stamped ornament and gilt title panels give the volume considerable decorative presence. The 1920 Sunday School prize inscription provides an appealing glimpse into the book’s early history, while the small period Christmas greeting bookmark found preserved inside adds a charming and very personal survival from an earlier reader.

The author: Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was one of the most important and widely read novelists of the Victorian era. Celebrated for his vivid characters, social observation, humor and extraordinary storytelling, Dickens used fiction both to entertain and to expose the hardships faced by the poor and vulnerable in nineteenth-century Britain. His novels include The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, works that have remained continuously in print and have established him as one of the defining figures of English literature.