Biographical Materials
Works: The Diamond Edition (1867) "in sixteen handy volumes"
- Vol. I. The Pickwick Papers
- Vol. II. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
- Vol. III. Dombey and Son
- Vol. IV. Nicholas Nickleby
- Vol. V. The Personal History of David Copperfield
- Vol. VI. Bleak House
- Vol. VII. Little Dorrit
- Vol. VIII Our Mutual Friend
- Vol. IX. Barnaby Rudge and Hard Times
- Vol. X. Christmas Books and Sketches by Boz
- Vol. XI. Oliver Twist with Pictures from Italy and American Notes
- XII. The Old Curiosity Shop and Reprinted Pieces
- XIII. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations
- XIV. The Uncommercial Traveller and Additional Christmas Stories
Titles not in the Diamond Edition
- 1868 January-May: A Holiday Romance
- 1868 Dec: A Christmas Carol
Note: By the end of 1867, Ticknor and Fields had issued the first fifteen of the "handy" sixteen Diamond Edition volumes, heralding the arrival of Charles Dickens and is manager, George Dolby, on 9 November 1867.
The Diamond Edition, containing all of Dickens's major writings to date, was clearly intended to promote Dickens's long-awaited second American reading tour which Boston publisher James T. Fields in 1866 had ardently been persuading Dickens to undertake, despite the tremendous stresses that such a far-flung tour extending over many months would entail for the fifty-five-year-old author. Arguably, this was the first uniform edition which contained all of Dickens's principal works to date, including everything from his earliest London Sketches to his most recent journalism, anthologized as The Uncommercial Traveller, and missing only certain collaborative frame-tales for Christmas such as the Collins-Dickens 1867 collaboration No Thoroughfare and The Mystery of Edwin Drood in a highly compact form suitable for reading on American railway and steamboat journeys. The print is necessarily tiny, but the advertisements refer to the volumes as "handy"; each book at a mere 5 ¾ x 4 ¼ inches is decidedly "pocket-sized."
In its "quality" periodical, The Atlantic Monthly, as well as in its special commemorative edition of the reading text of "Dr. Marigold" and "The Trial" from "Pickwick" (1868, but registered for copyright in 1867), Ticknor (later, Osgood) and Fields of Boston advertised its forthcoming 16-volume Diamond Edition of Dickens's works, which was to be published at the rate of four volumes per month and at the cost of $1.50 each (for green Morocco cloth; $3.00, half-calf) and each containing sixteen full-page illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Since the order of publication reflected the popularity of Dickens's recent novels rather than the chronological sequence of his works, the volume containing the twenty-year old Christmas Books and the thirty-year-old Sketches by Boz was the thirteenth.
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Bibliography
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge and Hard Times. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. IX.
_______. A Christmas Carol in Prose: being a ghost story of Christmas. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1869 [December 1868].
_______. Christmas Books and Sketches by Boz Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People [Seven Sketches from "Our Parish"]. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1875 [rpt. of the 1867 Ticknor & Fields volume]. X.
_______. Dombey and Son. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr, and engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. III.
_______. Great Expectations and Hard Times. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. XIII.
_______. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated Sol Eytinge, Jr. Engraved by A. V. S. Anthony. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. II.
_______. Little Dorrit. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1871. VII.
_______. The Old Curiosity Shop and Reprinted Pieces. 18 Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. XII.
_______. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Illustrated Household Edition. Boston: Lee and Shepard; New York: Charles T. Dillingham, 1870. VIII.
_______. The Personal History of David Copperfield. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. V.
_______. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. I.
_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 16 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. XIII.
Kitton, Frederic George. Dickens and His Illustrators: Cruikshank, Seymour, Buss, "Phiz," Cattermole, Leech, Doyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Tenniel, Frank Stone, Landseer, Palmer, Topham, Marcus Stone, and Luke Fildes. Amsterdam: S. Emmering, 1972. Re-print of the London 1899 edition.
Schlicke, Paul, ed. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.
Winter, William. "Charles Dickens" and "Sol Eytinge." Old Friends: Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1909. 181-202, 317-319.
Created 1 May 2017
Last modified 15 September 2021