A Dickens Tale

The novels of the 19th-century English writer Charles Dickens took William E. Self, a Hollywood veteran who worked as both an an actor and a producer, and the Ohio businessman Kenyon Starling from auction rivals to fast friends. On his death, in 1983, Starling, who had no family heirs, bequeathed his Dickensiana to Self’s daughter, Barbara Self Malone, who recently decided to part with the collection in an April 2 sale at Christie’s New York. A largely British and American crowd bid almost $2 million for some 200 lots: manuscripts, early editions, playbills and drawings. Thirteen presentation copies—reserved by Dickens for his closest associates—were among the top sellers, with the highlight being an 1838 first-edition Oliver Twist, pictured above. Bound in dark green leather with gilt edges and arabesque floral designs, it commanded $229,000 from an American private collector, setting a record for the Victorian author. Dickens inscribed the three-volume set in 1838 to the novelist William Ainsworth, who had introduced him to his first publisher and suggested he write about the progress of a poor lad. The previous Dickens record, $160,000, was set in 1996 at Sotheby’s New York for A Christmas Carol. This time around, a later edition of the holiday parable, inscribed to Josef Valckenberg, a London wine merchant, was bid to $91,000, against an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000.

Other rare finds that did quite well were an auction catalogue of Dickens’s estate (est. $1,200–1,800), which sold for $8,000, and a first-edition Sketches by Boz (est. $60–80,000), 1837–39, a collection of Dickens’s first published pieces, which brought $97,000. The same sum was paid for a first edition of Great Expectations—which, alas, did not exceed expectations, given that its high estimate was $120,000.

"A Dickens Tale" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.