Books and Manuscripts

From the Library of Charles Dickens

[Dickens, Charles] Force, Peter
American Archives: Fourth Series, Containing A Documentary History of the English Colonies in North America, From the King's Message to Parliament, of March 7, 1774, to The Declaration of Independence
Washington, (D.C.): M. St. Clair Clarke and Peter Force, December, 1840. Fourth Series, Volume III only. Folio. From the library of Charles Dickens, and with his armorial book-plate and his Gadshill Place book-plate, dated June, 1870, on front paste-down. Contemporary three-quarter diced russia over marbled paper-covered boards, stamped in gilt, boards and spine very worn and rubbed, front and rear boards detached, spine split in several places, old binder's tape on spine and joints; all edges trimmed; marbled endpapers; several leaves loose and/or starting; chipping and creasing along some fore-edge leaves. Sold with all faults. 

From the library of Charles Dickens, Peter Force's American Archives. Likely acquired by Dickens during his tour of the United States in 1842. Listed in the inventory of Dickens's Devonshire Terrace library, in May, 1844, and later listed in Henry Sotheran's valuation of Dickens's Gadshill Place Library, in 1871. The volume was subsequently sold by them in 1878, and is listed in John H. Stonehouse's 1935 reprint of their 1878 catalogue (p. 6).