The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: Illustrated with Etchings by T. Onwhyn, C. Coveny and W.F. Pailthorpe (Some Coloured by Hand), also Wood Engravings from Designs by H.K. Browne.

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Creator

Charles Dickens

Title

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: Illustrated with Etchings by T. Onwhyn, C. Coveny and W.F. Pailthorpe (Some Coloured by Hand), also Wood Engravings from Designs by H.K. Browne.

Coverage

Southend, Essex

Publisher

John Coxall

Date

1915

Subject

4 vols. (290, 288, 296, 290 pp.), 7" x 4 ¾." Total of 95 illustrations. Contemporary full green morocco, single-ruled borders in gilt, gilt spines & dentelles; a.e.g. Number of copies unstated (probably privately printed).

Description

Mysterious because neither Copac nor OCLC records a publisher with this imprint. Coxall evidently used the letterpress of the “Household Edition” of Pickwick first published in 1861 by W.A. Townsend, NY (with illustrations from F.O.C. Darley and John Gilbert).  Both editions have the same colophon, “Cambridge: Printed by H.O. Houghton.”

The Coveny plates are unusual. They were designed for Twenty Scenes from the Works of Dickens (Sidney 1882). Coveny was an Australian self-taught engraver.  Of the six wood engravers for the Phiz “designs,” only five can be identified by their signatures (W.T. Green, W. Measom, W.G. Mason, W.R. Sedgfield, and G. Dalziel).  The Onwhyn and Pailthorpe illustrations are familiar to Pickwickians.

Bibliographically, a set “outside” the usual parameters for a Pickwick collection.

Relation

From the collection of Stephen Zovickian