1905 The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens / Beautiful Antique Christmas Book / JM Dent London / Illustrated / With Some Wear

This is a gorgeous edition of Charles Dickens' The Cricket on the Hearth (one of the five Dickens' Christmas books), beautifully illustrated by CE Brock. Published by JM Dent & Co., London in 1905. That makes this copy 119 years old and so it inevitably has a few condition points, detailed below, but remains a lovely copy.

The Cricket on the Hearth A Fairytale of the Home, a short novel was published on 20 December 1845, two years after A Christmas Carol. It is the third in his series of "Christmas books": five short books with strong social and moral messages that he published during the 1840s. In addition to A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth, the Christmas Books include The Chimes (1844); The Battle of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848).

Bound in beautifully designed cream cloth covered boards decorated with dark grey cherubim and holly. With shiny gilt behind the titles.  There is some slight rubbing to the grey decoration in a couple of places on the front. The rear board has some dark areas. Has rubbing to the corners and spine ends. With some fraying to the cloth at the head and tail of the spine and a 1cm split down from the top along the joint with the rear board (see close-up photo).

Inside the book opens onto a tanned front free endpaper which as been strengthened along the joint by some professional bookbinder's tape (see photos). With the odd brown blemish to the pages and some light, faint staining to the top edges of the plates and to the last few pages/rear paste down. All of the colour plates are present as called for. The top edge is gilt, the other sides are untrimmed. This copy has not been written in and there are no other markings of previous ownership.

So with some signs of age, but remaining a scarce and very attractive Christmas book. Your antique Dickens' novella The Cricket on the Hearth will be wrapped with care in tissue and ribbon* and sent well packaged. I am always happy to add a gift card with a message to the parcel if desired. 

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H 18.5 cm x W 12.5 cm, 0.37 kg, 171 pages. I dispatch worldwide daily from the UK. (There are just a very few countries which I am unable to ship to).

* If you would prefer your book not to be decoratively wrapped but sent simply in the full protective packaging, please add a note to the order.

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