A DICKENS BIBLIOGRAPHY.*
IN this fascinating volume Mr. Eckel attempts to give a complete bibliography of the first editions of all the published works of Dickens, with illustrations of their most characteristic) features, notes as to prices realized at sales, and a list of the most interesting presentation copies. Mr. Eckel's evidence is largely drawn from American sources (notably the exhibitions of the Grolier Club), and he is apt now and then to attribute rather more importance to some of this evidence than circum, stances justify. Thus in regard to the Kolle letters, which were first published three years ago by the Bibliophile Society of Boston (though W. B. Hughes had seen and referred to them in print so long ago as 1891), Mr. Eckel lays great stress on their importance in establishing A Dinner at Poplar Walk as Dickens's first published work, a fact which, as Mr, Eckel is evidently aware, had been established and accepted long before even 1891. One would have been glad, too, to see some record of the hands through which the most famous of the copies mentioned have passed to their present destinations. This, however, is a field which Mr. Eckel scarcely touches. He does not, for instance, mention the Rowfant Library, although some of the recent sales in America to which he refers must have been sales of Rowfant copies. In this connexion, too, one may note that Frederick Locker's autograph copy of The Christmas Carol might well have been mentioned among the presentation copies, and his manuscript of the "Demeanour of Murderers" (Household Words, 1856, and not reprinted) might perhaps have been referred to. These, however, are fiery slight defects in a compilation of great interest. Mr. Eckel's illustrations are fascinating, and should prove most useful to the collector. He gives us a reproduction of the first page of chapter xvii. of Little Don-it, with the exceedingly characteristic inserted slip, on which the author explains the mistaken use of the name "Rigaud" for " Blandois " throughout the chapter ; of the slip in Part IX. of Bleak House dealing with the cancelled plate; of the title-page of Pickwiik with the name "Tony Veller " on the board above the " Marquis of Granby's " door ; of the " Cricket Match" plate by R. W. Buss in Part III. of Pickwick, which was afterwards cancelled by the author; of the title-page of the first issue of Martin Chuzzlewit, with the misprint (" 100E") in the notice on the signpost; of the slip explaining the title " Our Mutual Friend"; and many other points of almost equal interest. Most valuable perhaps are two discoveries which the author is able to announce for the first time in print. The first concerns a hitherto unsuspected fourth issue (chronologically the first) of the first edition of The Battle of Life; the second has to do with the manuscript of A Curious Dance Bound a Curious Tree, Dickens's share in * The First Editions of Charles Dickens. By J. C. Eckel. London: Chapslii and Hall. [12e. 64. net.] which had always been much disputed. The manuscript shows conclusively that Dickens in fact wrote, corrected, and re-corrected for the press at least half of the paper which gives the little book its name.
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