New York: James G. Gregory, 1861. In two volumes. Early American edition ("Household Edition"). 12mo. Illustrated with two steel-engraved frontispieces by T. Phillibrown after F.O.C. Darley. Publisher's dark green cloth-covered boards, stamped in gilt; all edges trimmed; yellow-coated endpapers; scattered light spotting to plates and text; contemporary ownership signature on front free endpaper of each volume; in grey cloth fall-down-back box. Smith 13, pp. 379-380

A near-fine early American edition of Great Expectations. The New York publisher, James G. Gregory, was the first to register the American copyright for this work, on August 26, 1861. Philadelphia publisher, T.B. Peterson followed on November 8, 1861, with Harper's close behind, on November 15, 1861. These dates led John M. Dundek to state in The Book Collector (Summer 1994, pp. 298-299), "there is a new claimant to the title of first American book edition of Great Expectations". However, Dickens's bibliographer Walter E. Smith notes that "the fact of publication is established not by the registration of a title or by the deposit of a copy of the book in the Library of Congress or elsewhere, but by the evidence of copies being sold, or openly offered for sale, to the public" (First American Editions, 2012, p. 380). Smith further notes that Peterson's edition was being sold by the end of July 1861, while Gregory's edition wasn't available until mid-September of that year.