(Allen Press) Dickens (Charles) and Wilkie Collins. The Wreck of the Golden Mary: A Saga of the Californian Gold Rush, by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Wood-Engravings by Blair Hughes-Stanton.. Crown 4to, pp.90 + proof engravings, 26cm, (Dorothy and Lewis Allen) Allen Press, Kentfield, California, 1956., 1956.

Price: US$3221.18 + shipping

Condition: Fine

Description: Set in Bulmer with Commercial Script for display and printed in surf green and black on handmade Japanese vellum. Xylographic 'by' on the title-page designed by Mallette Dean. One of 200 copies. Illustrated with seven wood-engravings. French marbled paper-covered boards, resembling storm tossed ocean water, pink spine with white titling and acetate jacket. This copy with one of the fifteen sets of proof wood-engravings, by Blair Hughes-Stanton, all signed and captioned in pencil. Housed together in a cloth solander box, lettered in gilt on the spine. Bookplate of Donald Lee Williams. Fine condition with prospectus loosely inserted. The text is the fictional story of the wreck of an English ship bound for California in 1851. The story is told in the first person throughout, with the captain speaking at the start, and the first mate taking over after he collapses. Some do finally make it to San Francisco and the gold Dickens and Collins wrote this tale specially for the Christmas, 1856, number of Household Words.

Seller: Collinge & Clark, London, United Kingdom