[DICKENS (Charles).]. Scenes from the life Of Nickleby Married. Containing Certain remarkable passages, Strange Adventures, and Extraordinary Occurrences. That befel The Nickleby family [faint mark that looks like a full-stop, but may be a risen shoulder] In their further career; Being A sequel to the "Life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby," As edited by "Boz." With illustrations by "Quiz." London: John Williams, 44, Paternoster Row, And 43, Aldersgate Street, 1840. Demy 8vo in half-sheets; twenty-two etched plates; leaf Q4 apparently a cancel (v. note); pp.[2]+[iv]+[3] - 516; puce fine-diaper cloth ruled and lettered gilt on spine (v. note). Sympathetically re-backed and re-cased, preserving the original end-papers; a little light foxing, mostly marginal to the first half of the volume (v. note), and plates with browning to some edges, and scattered foxing; in general, however, a nice copy of a very scarce title.

Apparently a publisher's cloth, but probably issued originally with a paper spine-label, the present gilt lettering between unadorned double rules being evidently later. The present copy exhibits stab-holes throughout, and appears to have been bound up from unsold parts, the stab-holes suggesting that the issue was made twenty-two parts in twenty-one, each consisting of twelve leaves with the exception of the first, which included an additional eight. The paper stock is white with a slight tendency to fox up to the start of gathering HH, and thereafter a harder, thinner, ‘antique-toned' paper was used that shows virtually no foxing. Because of the change of paper stock, and the collation, it can be said with some confidence that the title leaf was issued with the first number and the two leaves containing the Preface and Contents with the last. The leaf that we suspect of being a cancel in this copy, Q4 (pp.127 - 8), occurs in the white stock portion of the book, but is on the antique-toned paper used for the latter portion. Though the title-page contains no author's name ("Boz" being implied), the Preface is signed "Guess". One of the better-written Dickens sequels, and a remarkably close imitation both of his manner and style - his defects as well as his excellencies (except that it does not have his forensic accuracy of observation) - this extending even to his peculiarities of spelling (‘recal', ‘visiter', etc.), but the plotting is somewhat unsatisfactory in the second half. Includes a well planned highway robbery, a kidnapping, and a good deal of other criminality of one kind or another. There is no list of illustrations, but they are bound in to face pp.21, 45, 85, 89, 100, 109, 120, 133, 140, 156, 173, 204, 237, 260, 276, 308, 329, 364, 388, 428, 432, and 444. They are of excellent quality. A scarce title, not in the Gimbel or Suzzanet catalogues, nor in NUC; the British Library has only a defective copy (lacking all after p.504), to which COPAC adds the University of Birmingham copy only; Summers, p.495; Block, p.173, quoting one bookseller's copy only; not in Sadleir or Wolff; Kitton, Dickensiana, 529; Miller, p.245.

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