The Nonesuch Dickens.

With the original steel plate 'The Dying Clown' from Pickwick Papers, with letter of authenticity from the publisher. Text based upon the Charles Dickens Edition, the last to be revised by Dickens himself. After the Depression of the early thirties, the Nonesuch Press was effectively saved from bankruptcy by the intervention of the American, George Macy. The Dickens was very much his project and it was due to his great energy that the set was produced so quickly. It was described at the time by the Daily Telegraph as 'One of the most glorious achievements of publishing in our time. Robert Lynd in the News Chronicle declared it the most pleasant Dickens to read that has ever been published, while The Scotsman observed No more handsome edition of Dickens has yet appeared; nor is it easy to conceive of any which might surpass this one. As an inducement to subscribers, had advertised the fact that he would distribute one original full-page engraved plate with each set, and supply it with a box which matched the spine designs of the printed books. In 1937, electrotype duplicates of some of these plates were being offered for sale at £30, after a London bookseller had bought duplicate sets of plates for four novels from Chapman and Hall. Macy considered that 877 of the full-page illustrations he had bought from the same source were suitable for distribution by lottery to those subscribing to the Nonesuch Dickens, and accordingly the size of the edition was limited to that number.' - Dreyfus.