Editor’s Choice
The Nonesuch Dickens: ATale of Two Cities (Overlook/Duckworth, $35); Little Dorrit (Overlook/Duckworth, $40), Martin Chuzzlewit (Overlook/ Duckworth, $40) Bleak House (Overlook/Duckworth, $40), Christmas Books (Overlook/Duckworth, $35), David Copperfield (Overlook/Duckworth, $40) Great Expectations/Hard Times (Overlook/Duckworth, $35), Nicholas Nickleby (Overlook/Duckworth, $40), Oliver Twist (Overlook/Duckworth, $40). Book readers and book collectors are by no means the same animal. Nor should they be. At the same time, readers happy with any edition at all of a classic are bound to be a bit flabbergasted by great editions when they see them — like these.
It’s said that when Chapman and Hall first published Charles Dickens’ novels, Dickens himself supervised the editions, personally selecting each illustration (usually by his now-legendary illustrator George Cruikshank). In 1937, four scholars and editors found Chapman and Hall’s original plates and produced 877 complete editions (sold, by subscription only, for exorbitant prices) with the idea of a “perfect Dickens,” the Nonesuch Edition.
Duckworth in England and Overlook have collaborated on gorgeous, sensibly priced facsimile editions of the Nonesuch editions with creamy paper and Cruikshank’s illustrations. They’re available individually, in a three pack (“A Tale of Two Cities,” “Little Dorrit” and “Martin Chuzzlewit”) for $95, or a six pack of the rest listed above for $195.
An absurd indulgence in this economy perhaps. But still.
In “Oliver Twist,” you see Cruickshank’s illustration of Bill Sikes — the thug to end all thugs — trying to lower himself on a rope, just before dropping 35 feet into an accidental noose and hanging himself. His cringing dog is on the roof with him just before the dog too falls to his death in one of the most savagely matter-of-fact passages in Dickens.
The juxtaposition of prose and Cruikshank illustration is sublime.
— Jeff Simon
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