1853; Charles Dickens; 1st Edition, 1st Issue; London, Bradbury and Evans; Rebound Leather; Illustrated by H.K. Browne "Phiz"; 16/624 Pages; w5.7"xh8.7"; Rare!

• Beautiful dark green cloth with dark green/black leather binding/corners, blind stamped borders, ornate gold floral binding with maroon label, with a lovely frontispiece, vignette title page, 38 other fine illustrations (including all the "Dark Plates") and a Great Classic from the Legendary Author; Possibly bound from Original Parts, stab holes present at gutter, but not sure!

• First Issue Points: "elgble" misspelling for "eligible" on pp.19 line 6 "chair" misspelling for "hair" on pp.209 line 23 "counsinship" misspelling for "cousinship" on pp.275 line 22.

• Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

• Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills.

•  In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticized Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.