THE DODD FAMILY ABROAD

First edition, first printing. Two Volumes. Bound from the original serialised parts. Original wrappers, advertisements, and tipped in flyers bound separately. With forty illustrated plates (including frontispiece and title-page vignette) by "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne); this copy with the addition of three original drawings by the artist, mounted and bound alongside the relevant printed plates. Finely bound in nineteenth century full dark green morocco (the spines uniformly faded to brown), with five raised bands, gilt decorated compartments (two with titles in gilt), front and rear boards triple-ruled, upper and lower edges double-ruled, in gilt, and elaborately decorated inner dentelles, also in gilt. Burgundy endpapers. The additional volume of wrappers and advertisements is in matching morocco but lacking tooling to boards or spines. All plates present and correct. A near fine example, the bindings square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Light spotting to the fore-edge of the page block, marginally to some of the pages, and to binder's blank pages front and rear. A handsome set, with the wonderful addition of three original drawings by the great "Phiz".

With three original preliminary drawings by "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne), mounted and bound next to the relevant printed engraving within. The drawings are as follows: Frontispiece and title vignette; The New Dress, p. 42; Mademoiselle Dodd's "Charming Study", p. 386; Mary Anne "De Trop", p. 388. An epistolary novel, and apparently the author's favourite among his own works, 'The Dodd Family Abroad' relates the "humorous adventures on the Continent of an Anglo-Irish family filled with preposterously false ideas about the manners and customs of the countries they visit." (Stephen J. M. Browne) Charles James Lever was born in Dublin, and like Wilde and Beckett after him, attended Trinity College (1823–1828), taking his degree in medicine in 1831. He practised as a physician in Brussels before returning to Dublin to edit the Dublin University Magazine (1842-5). Acquainted with and respected by Dickens, Trollope and Thackeray; the latter, while noting the energy of Lever's humour, describes the salient tone as "not humour but sentiment. The spirits are mostly artificial, the fond is sadness, as appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and people." Lever died in Trieste (Joyce's home for fifteen years) in 1872, aged 65. (Stephen J. M. Brown, 'Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances, and Folk-lore', Dublin: 1916; Sadleir 1404).