First editions. Folio. Vol 2. Number 1-Vol 3 No 52, 103 issues in all plus supplements. New York. Saturday January 4th -. Price Six Dollars. Per Annum. DICKENS FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT IN AMERICA. Page 41 repaired (first leaf of issue 6) but overall a clean and crisp set. Bookplate of Lt Colonel Baird to front pastedowns, contemporary calf on marbled boards, spines worn. In these two volumes there are found 1. Mrs. Joseph Porter. Vol. 2 no. 13, 1834 (page 104). 2. Dinner at Poplar Walk. Vol. 2 no. 14, 1834 (page 106-107). 3. The Bloomsbury Christening. Vol. 2 no. 19, 1834 (page 147). 4. The Boarding House. Vol. 2 nos 26 & 41, 1834 (pages 201-2; 323-324). Vol. 3 no. 12, 1835. 5. The Steam Excursion. Vol. 2 no. 46, 1834 (page 361). 6. Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle. Vol. 3 no. 6, & Vol. 3 no. 12, 1835 (pages 43 and 92-93). As is known, Dickens engagement with America was a complicated one: he admired it greatly, but was also discomforted by his work s being published without copyright. Obtaining legal redress to pirating overseas, partly sparked by the Albion, led him to one of his first and most successful campaigns. At the same time, these stories appearing as they do in 1834-35 mark an extremely early appearance of Dickens in print: Pickwick was to come only in 1837, and his earliest ever article was printed in December 1833, in The Monthly Journal. The stories here were eventually to be gathered in book form in Sketches by Boz. The Albion does appear in the Podeschi Gimbel catalogue (page 300-301, as the first of all the Periodical entries), but only dating from 1838, making no mention of these earlier issues. Rare in commerce.