[Dickens], Watkins Tottle, and Other Sketches, 1836, first American edition of 'Sketches by Boz'

[DICKENS, CHARLES]

Watkins Tottle, and Other Sketches, Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People by Boz. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836 

12mo (190 x 110mm.), 2 volumes, FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, original light green boards with red-brown cloth backstrips and paper labels, collector's folding cloth case, calf gilt spine label, spotted, front free endpapers to each volume with some loss due to adhesion to paste-down, volume one with some loss to title-page, boards slightly soiled and rubbed at extremities, backstrips faded, labels rubbed with some slight loss to edges   

Watkins Tottle and Other Sketches is the FIRST OF DICKENS' BOOKS TO BE PUBLISHED IN AMERICA, issued in England as Sketches by Boz. This and the story The Tuggs at Ramsgate both pre-date the first American edition of Pickwick Papers. 1250 copies were issued in May 1836, three months after the London Chapman and Hall edition. 

REFERENCE:

Smith First American Editions 1; Gimbel A8

PROVENANCE:

Sumner and Stillman, Catalogue 142, First American Editions of Charles Dickens. The Calinescu Collection, Part I, item 2 (March 2010)