DICKENS, Charles

Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

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V.D.L., Dowling Launceston, 1839. Octavo, lithographed frontispiece, additional lithographed title-page with vignette, and 18 lithograph plates (variants all in Craig's "A" state), as usual without the two leaves of inserted terminal advertisements (issued in only a few copies); some light soiling, as usual, but a very good copy in the original colonial half red calf; contemporary inscription of William Inkersol(?) ruled through on the half-title, the name "Arthur Compton" dated 1888 on half-title. First edition of the famous and rare Tasmanian "pirated" Pickwick.

Capitalising on the insatiable demand for the London printing of Charles Dickens' Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, the Launceston printer Henry Dowling decided to pirate the edition and release it in parts as they became available throughout 1838 and 1839. The story of its publication is dealt with at length by Clifford Craig, in The Van Diemen's Land Edition of the Pickwick Papers (Hobart 1973), who describes the book as 'one of the most coveted books sought after by the Australian collector'. It is also a great rarity in collections of Dickens in Europe and America.

The illustrations, which were offered for sale after the publication in parts was complete, have generally been thought to be the work of either Jack Briggs, who was a servant of the publisher, or Wainwright, the poisoner. Recent research, however, hypothesizes that they may have been carried out by the colonial artist Robert Hawker Dowling, the publisher's brother.
Bremer, 355; Kerr, p. 804-5 and 217-9.

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