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DICKENS, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club . London: Chapman and Hall, 1845.
DICKENS, Charles. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club . London: Chapman and Hall, 1845. 8 o (210 x 133 mm). Half-title. Engraved frontispiece and title, 41 plates by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz") (some spotting to plates). PRESENTATION BINDING of contemporary red diced russia, gilt ruled on covers with gilt-decorated border, spine gilt-decorated and -lettered, edges gilt (discreetly rebacked preserving original spine); quarter morocco slipcase. Provenance : HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1805-1875), Danish author and poet who met Dickens on his first visit to England in 1847 (presentation inscription from the author); Barton Currie (bookplate, purchased from A.S.W. Rosenbach in 1930, illustrated in his Fishers for Books ; his sale Parke Bernet, 7 May 1963, lot 120); Paul Francis Webster (bookplate, his sale Sotheby's New York, 24 April 1985, lot 25). A REMARKABLE PRESENTATION COPY FROM DICKENS TO HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN LINKING TWO OF THE GREATEST INTERNATIONAL LITERY FIGURES -- AND MOST CELEBRATED CHILDREN'S AUTHORS -- OF THE 19TH CENTURY Later edition. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY DICKENS TO HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN on the title: "Hans Christian Andersen From his friend and admirer Charles Dickens London Jul. 1847." Andersen first visited England in June, 1847 and was invited to numerous parties by the Countess of Blessington, whose intellectual, literary and political friends received the Danish author with immense enthusiasm. It was at one of these parties where Andersen first met Dickens, shaking his hand and walking out onto the veranda, a moment which Andersen recorded in his diary: "We had come to the veranda, I was so happy to see and speak to England's now living writer, whom I love the most." Dickens was similarly taken with Andersen, and wrote to William Jerdan on July 14: "Tell Andersen not to let the Nimrods of London kill him, but to live and write more books. I mean, if I can, to live and read 'em" (Pilgrim Edition of the Letters , p.130). A month after they met, Dickens went to Andersen's lodgings to discover that Andersen was not in. He left him a parcel containing 12 presentation copies of his books, along with a letter which Dickens told Andersen was written "In Your Room," asking him to "Accept the little parcel of books" (ibid, p.134). In late January 1848, Dickens again wrote to Andersen, this time to express "A Thousand thanks, my dear Andersen, for your kind and and dearly-prized remembrance of me in your Christmas book." Andersen had dedicated his A Christmas Greeting to My English Friends to Dickens: "I am again in my quiet Danish home, but my thoughts are daily in dear England, where, a few months ago, my friends transformed for me reality into a charming fairy story ... I feel a desire, a longing, to transplant in England the first produce of my poetic garden as a Christmas greeting; and I send it to you, my dear, noble Charles Dickens who by your works had been previousely dear to me, and since our meeting have taken root for ever in my heart ... (ibid, p.242). Dickens told Andersen that he read his Christmas story "over and over again, with the most unspeakable delight." Of the volumes Dickens presented to Andersen, twelve are now in the Royal Library, Copenhagen and another is in the Dickens House. In the next decade, a correspondence developed between the two writers and in 1857 Andersen again traveled to England, primarily to visit Dickens, at whose house he stayed for five weeks. Dickens modeled the character UriaH Heep in David Copperfield after Andersen: an obsequious character not subtly hinting that the house guest had overstayed his welcome.