OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. With Illustrations

1865. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1865. 2 pp undated ads. Original purple cloth.

First Complete American Edition. Harper paid for the advance rights to issue OUR MUTUAL FRIEND serially in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, and then issued it in several book forms. One format was in two wrappered volumes, beginning with Part I on 2 February 1865. Then on 11 November 1865, Harper issued both part II of that format (at 50¢) , AND the entire book either in cloth (as here, at $1.50) or in wrappers (at $1.00). All of these formats include 34 of the 40 illustrations that has appeared in the UK. This more or less mirrored when the two volumes were being issued in England. Meanwhile John Bradburn of New York, "borrowing" from Harper's serialization, was issuing the book in four volumes (after aborting his effort to do it in monthly numbers); Bradburn's first volume came out in October 1864, constituting the first appearance of any part of the novel in book form on either side of the Atlantic (and likewise Bradburn's Vol III was the first such appearance of that segment of the novel). Bradburn did not publish Vol IV until December 1865, though -- after this Harper edition -- so Harper's qualifies as the first edition of the entire novel to be published. This copy is in purple honeycomb-grain cloth, the primary binding cited by Smith (there were five or more cloth variants, used without priority). Condition is very good-plus (spine sunned as always with purple cloth, very minor wear at the extremities). Smith pp 387-392; Gimbel A151; Wilkins p. 32.