Master Humphrey's Clock

First edition. 1840 [-1841]. Three tall octavo volumes. Pp. [4], [iv], 306; [2], [vi], 306; [vi], 426. Half-bound in blue-green morocco boards with gilt decoration to spine, marbled edges. Two frontispieces, 130 woodcuts, and twenty-five initials by H.K. "Phiz" Browne; one frontispiece and thirty-eight woodcuts by G. Cattermole; one woodcut each by S. Williams and D. Maclise.

The first edition in book form, comprising sheets from the original parts issue, and all published separately. Originally issued simultaneously in [20] monthly parts (Apr. 1840 – Nov. 1841), this is the only one of Dickens's works to appear in [88] weekly instalments (4 Apr. 1840 – 4 Dec. 1841). Contemporaneous with the publication of vol. iii, the work was also issued as two separate one-volume novels.

Contemporary ownership signature on front free endpaper of vol. iii, expert repairs to some margins, occasional light foxing, else fine.

Initially conceived as a miscellany of stories and sketches under the guise of a storytelling circle led by Master Humphrey, Dickens had to abandon the project when the hoped-for readership failed to materialize. Instead, at the fourth number he turned the serial into a framing device for his novels, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, with Master Humphrey himself standing aside as a narrator halfway through the unravelling of the former. "This odd mélange which includes The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, and an elaborate surrounding apparatus, is the pinnacle of Dickensian Gothic." –Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914, 60.

[Eckel pp. 67–70; Podeschi A51; Smith I, 6; NCBEL III, 794]