"Embossed binding" — cover for the 1872 single-volume edition of Charles Lever's "The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life" by "Phiz" (1852)

Embossed binding

1872

Green Morocco

Cover: 23.1 cm by 14 cm (8 ¾ by 5 ½ inches)

Charles Lever's The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life, with military paraphernalia in gilt.

[Click on image to enlarge it.]

Scanned image, sizing, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.

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Commentary: Remembering Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

As was the case when Charles Dickens (1812-70) died, his publishers, Chapman and Hall, tried to capitalise on the newsworthy event by issuing an authoritative edition of Lever's Works in a multi-volume set, elegantly bound in Irish green with gilt ornamentation. However, whereas Chapman and Hall were reasonably sure that a uniform revised edition of Dickens — The Household Edition — would sell well with entirely fresh illustrations by such New Men of the Sixties as Fred Barnard and James Mahoney in a new folio format, in the case of Lever's works the same publishers opted instead for single-volume quartos containing the original illustrations of Hablot Knight Browne, better remembered today as the chief illustrator for most of Dickens's novels from Pickwick Papers to A Tale of Two Cities over three decades. However, whereas Dickens had remained a popular author and best-seller right up to his death in June 1870, expiring in the midst of the serialisation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Lever's popularity had waned and died with the publication of A Day's Ride; or, The Romance of Life a decade earlier.

Although the 1852 novel is hardly ever read today outside graduate courses, it went through a number of editions on either side of the Atlantic, both fully- and partially illustrated, including Chapman and Hall's "two volumes in one" (1859) in a complete edition of Lever's Works, and Collier's (New York) in 1882, Volume VI in its edition of Lever's works. As the milieu that Lever understood so well, the elegant continental society of post-Napoleonic Europe, faded from popular memory, especially after the Crimean War, Lever's popularity with the British reading public faded, whereas new editions periodically appeared in New York, possibly owing to America's not subscribing to International Copyright until 1896.

Related Material

Bibliography

Brown, John Buchanan. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's, 1978.

Downey, Edmund. Charles Lever: His Life in Letters. 2 vols. London: William Blackwood, 1906.

Fitzpatrick, W. J. The Life of Charles Lever. London: Downey, 1901.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. The Daltons or Three Roads in Life. Illustrated by "Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, two volumes, 1852, rpt. in single volume format, 1859 and 1872.

_______. The Daltons; or, Three Roads in Life and A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'). Vol VI of Lever's Works. New York: P. F. Collier, 1882.

Lever, Charles James. The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life. http://www.gutenberg.org//files/32061/32061-h/32061-h.htm

Skinner, Anne Maria. Charles Lever and Ireland. University of Liverpool. PhD dissertation. May 2019.

Stevenson, Lionel. Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. New York: Russell & Russell, 1939, rpt. 1969.

_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.

Last modified 22 April 2022