There are differences in the various accounts of the amount Dickens was to receive for his work. A letter from the publishers to him mentions their terms as nine guineas a sheet for each part consisting of a sheet and a half; fifteen guineas a number was the sum as stated by Mr. Edward Chapman to Mr. Forster; and Dickens himself, in a letter to Miss Hogarth, afterwards his wife, says, fourteen pounds a month. During publication, he received in checks from the publishers £3000. In 1837 Chapman & Hall agreed that after five years he should have a share in the copyright, on consideration that he write a similar book for which he was to receive £3000, besides having the whole copyright after five years. Forster thinks the author received, in all, £25,000, while the publishers' profits during the three years from 1836 to 1839 are said to have amounted to £14,000 on the sale of the work in numbers alone.
Chapman & Hall issued the book in volume form in 1837, at twenty-one shillings.
Mr. Frederic G. Kitton says:
"There are probably not more than a dozen copies of the first edition of "Pickwick" in existence. An examination of a number of impressions presumably of this edition results in the discovery of slight variations both in plates and text. These are especially noticeable in the illustrations, for, owing to the enormous demand, the plates were re-etched directly they showed signs of deterioration in the printing, and "Phiz," in reproducing his designs, sometimes altered them slightly. The earliest impressions of the work may be distinguished by the absence of engraved titles on the plates, and by their containing the original etchings by Seymour and Buss, not "Phiz's" replicas of them."
Octavo.
Collation: xiv pp., 1 l., 609 pp. Forty-five plates, including engraved title-page.
THOMAS CARLYLE
(1795-1881)
79. Sartor Resartus. | In Three Books. | Reprinted for Friends from Fraser's Magazine. | [Quotation] London: | James Fraser, 215 Regent Street. | M.DCCC.XXXIV.