Great Expectations. by DICKENS, Charles - 1861: FIRST EDITION, first impression. 3 vols.

32pp cata. (May 1861) in vol. III. Original violet-purple vertical wavy-grained cloth, boards blocked in blind, spines lettered & decorated in gilt; signs of label removal from front boards, small repairs to inner hinges & to corners. A good-plus copy. In cloth fold-over box.
Sadleir 688; Wolff 1799 with August 1861 catalogue. See Smith p.101, but published before Clarendon. This is a decent, honest first edition, first impression with all the points required in Clarendon appendix D except for: p.39.5, vol. II, has no ink between 'you' & 'feel'; p.193. foot, vol. III, has middle I not faint - and see below re: p.192.11.
Page number 103 in vol. III lacks the last digit; page 193, line 23, lacks the first i in 'inflexible'; page 195, line 2, opening inverted comma missing entirely; page 220, end of line hyphen faint. These points indicate the first state of vol. III, see p.499 of the Clarendon edition, but p.192 line 11 reads 'himself very', suggesting this must have been a very early change by the typesetters.
Like Sadleir's copy, this is ex-library; most of the first impression of a thousand copies were sold to circulating libraries. Presumably it was Mudie's labels that were carefully removed from the covers as volumes I & III contain the yellow 'Recent works of Fiction in circulation at Mudie's Select Library' labels affixed to the following endpapers. The list begins with Silas Marner and ends with Bond and Free.
Mudie's sold the volumes to St. Mary Tavy (in Devon, near Tavistock) Mutual Improvement Society, and are so inscribed in manuscript on the leading pastedowns, numbered '149', '150', '151' and indicating a loan period of '14 days'.
Many copies of so-called 'first editions' have been tampered with - with reprinted titlepages or edition statements erased. The Clarendon edition supersedes earlier bibliographies such as Eckel, Sadleir, Wolff & Smith. The crucial conclusions are that a) Great Expectations was printed in at least five & probably six batches from standing type, b) small changes - dropped type, replaced type, minor amendments - identify each impression. Now, 'tampered with' copies can be easily identified so that (for instance) a fifth impression text cannot be passed off as first impression by inserting a titlepage, something which has happened to a large number of copies of Dickens's most expensive first edition.