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Unsigned book from the personal library of Charles Dickens — Christopher North: A Memoir of John Wilson, Vols. I and II. First edition. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1862. Hardcover with the spine and front covers stamped with gilt titling and portrait bust, 5.5 x 7.75, 734 pages. The front pastedown of each volume bears two affixed bookplates: one being the personal bookplate of Charles Dickens, which bears an engraved image of a lion couchant holding a Maltese cross above his name; and the other, which reads, “From the Library of Charles Dickens, Gadshill Place, June, 1870,” serving as the original sales label that was created in 1870, when the writer’s personal belongings were auctioned off after his death. Housed in a custom-bound slipcase with matching chemise. Book condition: G+/None, with cracked hinges, edgewear, spines darkened, and a few small stains.
The crest associated with Charles Dickens did not originate with him but with his father, John Dickens, who claimed a long-dormant coat of arms granted in 1625 to William Dickens, a London merchant. The device showed a gold lion couchant holding a cross patonce. Although Charles Dickens professed little interest in ancestry, he adopted the crest for his own use, incorporating it into his letterhead, bookplates, and household items. In doing so, he accepted a form of heraldic display that echoed the social pretensions he so often criticized in his writing.
As it was reproduced by different engravers and decorators, its details varied, and Dickens himself later took steps to clarify its form. In 1840, writing to the cabinetmaker John Overs, he instructed that the lion should hold a Maltese cross rather than a cross patonce, and provided a drawing to show the intended shape, with arms broad at the base and tapering to their points.
