Bleak House, 1853, 1st edition, 1st issue, leather

First edition, first printing of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1853. The full suite of 40 plates are present, including the frontispiece, title-page and 10 ''dark plates''. All first printing points are present: ''elgble'' on p. 19, line 6; ''chair'' instead of ''hair'' on p. 209, line 23; and ''counsinship'' instead of ''cousinship'' on p. 275, line 22. Bound in full tan calf by Tout. Five raised bands on spine. All gilt edges. Original blue wrapper from the August serial publication bound at the front.

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20 episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because a testator wrote several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens claimed there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably the Thellusson v Woodford case in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though the legal profession criticized Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
(Wikipedia)

Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still widely read today. (Wikipedia)

Hablot Knight Browne (10 July 1815 – 8 July 1882) was an English artist and illustrator. Well-known by his pen name, Phiz, he illustrated books by Charles Dickens, Charles Lever, and Harrison Ainsworth. (Wikipedia)