Bleak House

London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853 Illustrated with 40 plates by H.K. Browne ("Phiz"), including a frontispiece and vignette title page. First edition, with all of the textual first issue points called for by Smith; in later issue binding, bound in the same color, cloth pattern, and blind stampings as Dombey and Son, with undated vignette title page. Publisher's olive green fine-diaper cloth, boards stamped in blind with triple-ruled borders and chain-like frames with floral decoration in each corner, spine stamped in blind and lettered in gilt, and white endpapers (likely variant endpapers, as Smith calls for pale yellow endpapers). Very good, with boards slightly bowed, some toning to spine, clean cloth with a touch of staining to foot of spine, some very discrete glue repair to tears to cloth at foot of spine and along rear joint, small ticket to front pastedown, penciled ownership signature to front free endpaper, and clean pages with very light occasional spotting to plates. Overall, an attractive publisher's cloth copy. Smith I, 10. Often regarded as one of Dickens' finest novels, Bleak House follows the long-running Court of Chancery case Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, a complicated lawsuit that involves almost every class of English society, and heavily criticizes the moral shortcomings of the British judicial system. With Bleak House, illustrator Hablot Knight Browne continued his experimental use of dark plates, of which there are ten - a significant increase from the singular dark plates in his preceding two novels Dombey and Son and David Copperfield. Additionally, Browne continues the use of horizontal illustrations in Bleak House, another technique he began with Dombey, with almost half of the illustrations here being in this layout. Bleak House is a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good. Illus. by Browne, H.K..