WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS: OUR MUTUAL FRIEND VOL. I

Nathan Simon, New York, no date but believe circa 1900.  Hard cover, with Book The First-The Cup and the Lip being chapters 1 to 17 containing pages 1 to 220, Book The Second-Birds of a Feather being chapters 1 to 16 containing pages 221 to 436, Book The Third-A Long Lane being chapters 1 to 17 containing pages 437 to 654, and Book The Fourth-A Turning being chapter 1 containing pages 655 to 667.  Purple cloth over boards with paper label on spine; edge, cover, corner and spine end wear, bit of board exposed at lower corners, glue repair to cloth and label the length of spine with some small losses to cloth and a touch of fraying; some spots, fading and damp marks to cloth.  Binding with headbands, cracked and appears somewhat repaired at rear pastedown gutter with some webbing visible, all pages secure; top edge gilt showing a bit of waviness from water, fore and bottom edges untrimmed (some pages have not been opened).  Old water mark at mid top margin to mid fore-edge margin from List of Illustrations page to approx. p. 164, diminishing in size and discolouration as it progresses and not affecting readability; occasional age spot; unrepaired fore-edge tear into text on p. 665/6.  Title page lists illustrations by E. G. Dalziel but all printed tissue guards state Marcus Stone; all illustrations present with printed tissue guards intact except one for page 82, which is not present and it does not appear that it was manually removed (believe to be a manufacturing flaw).  One of the first thousand impressions from a new set of plates, with publisher’s facsimile signature.