ANONYMOUS. "Christmas Eve" With the Spirits; Or, The Canon's wanderings Through ways unknown With some further tidings of the lives of Scrooge and Tiny Tim. With original illustrations. Drawn and Engraved by Messrs. A.R. Dorrington and Co. Fourth Edition. London: Bull, Simmons, and Co., Publishers, librarians, etc., 9, Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, W., 1870. Sm.f'cap 8vo; half-title not called for; wood-engraved frontispiece and four plates, all on plate-paper but tipped onto stubs and included in the pagination; title-page printed in red and black; 12pp. integral advertisements followed by blank at end; pp.[viii]+90+[xii]+[2]; pinkish red fine morocco cloth ruled and blocked blind on back cover, elaborately ruled, blocked, and lettered gilt, elaborately blocked black, on front cover. Nice copy.

A scarce Dickens parody originally published in the Winter season of 1869 in an issue identical with the present one except for the Edition statement on the title-page. Given that Dickens was still alive at the time, the anonymous author somewhat disingenuously states in the Preface: "I have always esteemed anonymous publications as only to be excused for two purposes. First, for any Author who, having written and published many works with his name attached, wishing to test whether his writing deteriorates or improves, publishes one anonymously, and consequently without any prestige attaching to his name. Secondly, for any Author publishing his first work and wishing it to be fairly tested by its own merits alone. All other anonymous publications I deem most inexcusable, and to signify, in one word, "cowardice." For one of these reasons, therefore, I have published this work without any other name than that of THE AUTHOR." The book is interesting for other reasons as well: Bull, Simmons, and Co., as the advertisements at the end make clear, are the successors to Mr. Edward Bull of Holles-street, who published three-deckers and other works in the 1820s and 1830s in connection with his bookselling and lending-library businesses. The present volume appears to be the first published under "the revival of this branch of their business", though six others are advertised as in preparation (one as "Ready December 1st"), another Disinherited; A tale being by the author of the present volume, and two by Thomas Simmons, who is no doubt not unrelated to the junior partner. The advertisements also include mention of the firm's library business, their reproduction antiquities business (Models of Mediaeval Fonts and Crosses), their lists of second-hand books withdrawn from their circulating library, and of bound books for presentation, and makes clear that they function likewise not merely as foreign and colonial booksellers, but as agents undertaking "commissions for all kinds of exports, besides the departments of their own trade, thus affording a convenience to Colonists and Tourists not otherwise obtainable; and acting as a Depôt to which all miscellaneous orders can be given". Included also is a price list for the binding of single volumes of various sizes of book in cloth, half roan, half roxburgh, various styles of calf, morocco, vellum, etc., and for casing magazines. "Bull's Library," they say, "has now been established for a century", which if taken strictly literally would make it one of the oldest then surviving. Not in Sadleir, Wolff, Summers, the London Library Catalogue, or Locke's ‘Spectrum'; BLC records both the the first and second impressions, but no later ones; NUC the Yale and Harvard copies only, both apparently being of the first printing. Not in Halkett & Laing. The other title by the same author advertised as forthcoming in the advertisements of the present volume is not recorded by either BLC or NUC, and perhaps never appeared - which may lead one to wonder about the accuracy of the statement ‘Fourth Edition' on the title-page!

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