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Record ID:
160509
Accession number:
MA 97
Credit:
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, before 1900.
Description:
1 item (68 p.), bound ; 23.4 cm
Notes:
High reserve.
Includes extensive revisions.
On the title page: "A Christmas Carol / In Prose; / Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. / By Charles Dickens / The Illustrations by John Leech / Chapman and Hall No. 6 Strand / MDCCCXLIII. / My own, and only, MS of the Book"; signed by Charles Dickens.
Preface dated "December 1843" and signed "CD."
Signed on the back flyleaf by Francis Hopkinson Smith (dated Nov. 20, 1914) with a note from Belle Greene.
Housed in:
Maroon cloth drop-spine box with tan paper cover (28.1 cm)
Binding:
Red leather, gilt-tooled, lettered "Thomas Mitton Esqre." on upper cover and "A Christmas Carol / Dickens / MDCCCXLIII" on spine (23.5 cm).
Provenance:
Presented by the author to Thomas Mitton, his childhood friend and onetime solicitor. In 1875 Thomas Mitton sold the manuscript to Francis Harvey, bookseller, for £50. Purchased by Henry George Churchill (autograph collector who had it photographed; 750 facsimile copies were made from these photographs). In 1882 Churchill consigned it to Bennett, a Birmingham bookseller, who sold it for £200 to Robson and Kerslake of London. Robson and Kerslake sold it to Stuart M. Samuel (of Samuel Montagu & Co.) for £300. Purchased by the London bookseller J. Pearson & Co., presumably from Samuel, for £1000. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1900 from J. Pearson & Co.
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