[16] The dress is also black in a reprint of the first edition published by Messrs. Macmillan in 1892, and in the large edition with the illustrations coloured, published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall in 1895.
Before passing from Oliver Twist, it should be pointed out that the first issue of 1838, which contains the suppressed plate, is also differentiated from the second issue of the same year by what is sometimes alluded to as the “suppressed title-page,” which runs as follows:—“Oliver Twist; / or, the / ‘Parish Boy’s Progress;’ / by ‘Boz,’ / in three volumes, / Vol. I (II. or III.) / London: / Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street. / — — / 1838.”
The second issue, with the substituted plate, has:—“Oliver Twist / By / Charles Dickens, / Author of ‘The Pickwick Papers,’” the rest of the title being as in the first. It is curious to notice, further, that in a later edition the original title is resumed.
So much for Oliver Twist. We must not, however, quit Dickens without mentioning one or two other items, which more or less of right find their place in a treatise on “Suppressed Plates.” {53}
There is, for example, the etched title-page to the first issue of the first edition of Martin Chuzzlewit, where the reward on the direction post appears as “100£” instead of “£100,” which is often wrongly labelled “suppressed.” As a matter of fact it was not suppressed at all. It is nothing more than the first state of a plate which was afterwards altered. However, the bait is so valuable a one with which to entice the bibliomaniac, that there is no prospect of the description being lightly relinquished, and as it is one object of this treatise to protect the unwary, allusion to it is not out of place. The fact that it is the title-page issued after the book had appeared serially with its forty illustrations, disposes of any lingering idea that in acquiring it we are assured of the possession of early impressions of the other plates. But the undiscriminating bibliomaniac requires no logical justification, and the plate will still retain its market value.
A like variation is to be found in a well-known etching by George Cruikshank, entitled “The Worship of Wealth.” The head of Mammon is represented by a small money-bag, and the {54} features of the face by the letters GOLD. Of this plate only one state was known until in a happy moment one of our best-known collectors discovered and secured a unique proof with all the letters printed in reverse, thus:—
—a triumph which only the true dilettante will appreciate at its proper value.
Another variation of the same kind is to be found in the first and second issues of Pine’s beautiful edition of Horace (1733), in which the text is engraved throughout. In the first there is the misprint “Post est” on the medal of Cæsar. In the second “Potest” has been substituted. Copies containing the mistake fetch twice as much in the market as those containing the correction! This is, however, justifiable, as the mistake connotes an early set of impressions.
