The New York Public Library, Berg Collection
of English and American Literature
The front endpaper of Charles Dickens's copy of the first edition of Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848).
John Dickens traced the family line, perhaps fancifully, back to the sixteenth century. His son Charles claimed a crest that was originally granted to one William Dickens, citizen of London, in 1625, using it on many of his personal possessions, including his silver and, as here, his bookplate. Dickens described the crest, which was designed for him in 1840 by John Overs, a London cabinet-maker, as a lion couchant (lying down) bearing "in his right paw, a maltese cross."
The sales label for his library was affixed when Dickens's effects were auctioned off at Gad's Hill Place after his death.
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