The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
“Nicholas Nickleby is the supreme point of Dickens's spring…I mean that this book coincided with his resolution to be a great novelist and his final belief that he could be one. Henceforward his books are novels…Previously they have not really been novels at all...
“Dickens was always particularly good at expressing...the treasures that belong to those who do not succeed in this world...[T]hese unsuccessful men commonly cannot even speak. Dickens is the voice of them, and a very ringing voice...” -G.K. Chesterton, Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
FIRST BOOK EDITION of one of Dickens’s most successful works, in extraordinary binding by Hayday, with his stamp. LIKELY A PRESENTATION BINDING: Hayday was the preferred binder used by Dickens and Chapman and Hall for special presentation copies of the period.
“The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby had begun its monthly part-issue in March 1838 and was completed in twenty numbers in October 1839. This story, which for thirteen months Dickens wrote alongside Oliver Twist, originated in his determination to expose the scandal of unwanted children consigned to remote and brutal Yorkshire schools; accompanied by Browne, he conducted an on-the-spot midwinter investigation just before beginning to write Nickleby. In this rambling, episodic, often wildly funny book, written very much in the mode of the Smollett novels Dickens had devoured as a child, the Yorkshire school setting is soon left behind, and the gallant young hero and his pathetic protégé, Smike, wander forth to undergo various adventures, both farcical and melodramatic; they are persecuted by Nicholas's wicked uncle and other villains, who also threaten the virtue of Nicholas's pure young sister Kate, but all is eventually set right by the benevolent Cheeryble brothers, though they cannot save Smike. The story is rich in unforgettable comic characters like the endlessly garrulous Mrs Nickleby and the strolling player Vincent Crummles and his troupe, and in places it resembles Sketches by Boz in its vivid evocation of particular London neighbourhoods” (Dictionary of National Biography).
ON HAYDAY BINDINGS: James Hayday was one of the most respected binders of the nineteenth century and some of the most famous Dickens presentation copies from the 1830s and 1840s are in Hayday bindings. (For example, the Oliver Twist inscribed to Ainsworth; the Barnaby Rudge inscribed to Talfourd; the Old Curiosity Shop inscribed to Macready; and the dedication copy of Martin Chuzzlewit. )
John Forster, in The Life of Charles Dickens, gives evidence of Hayday’s stature for Dickens’s works, noting, “a copy of [Pickwick] I received from [Dickens] on the 11th of December [1837] in the most luxurious of Hayday's bindings, with a note [by Dickens:] 'Chapman and Hall have just sent me... three 'extra-super' bound copies of Pickwick, as per specimen inclosed. The first I forward to you, the second I have presented to our good friend Ainsworth, and the third Kate has retained for herself. Accept your copy with one sincere and most comprehensive expression of my warmest friendship'" (Forster, 1911, vol.1, p.86).
“Works bound by Hayday became famous and increased in monetary value.... A number of his bindings are in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London” (Oxford DNB).
Complete with 39 plates by Phiz and frontispiece engraving by Finden.
Issue points: Nickleby is a notoriously complex book bibliographically. This copy with the most important first issue points, “latter” for “letter” (p. 160) and “visiter” for “sister” (p.123); overall with 32 of 41 textual points as noted in Smith. First four plates with Chapman and Hall imprint (first state); frontispiece without imprint.
London: Chapman and Hall, 1839. Octavo, contemporary burgundy polished calf by Hayday, with his stamp on the rear free endpaper; gilt- and blind-tooled boards, gilt-decorated spine in six compartments, gilt dentelles, marbled edges and endpapers. Small closed tears to edges of two plates (p.175, p.188). Browning to some plates (as usual), mostly at edges; text exceptionally clean. Binding with neat repairs to joints and spine ends. A beautiful copy in an important (and likely presentation) binding of one of Dickens’s most enduring works.
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