First edition in book form, cloth-bound issue. ‘My dear children, I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ’ (p. 11). The Life of Our Lord was a version of the New Testament, which was written by Dickens for his children between 1846 and 1849 (the year in which his eighth child, Henry Fielding Dickens, was born). As the author’s great-great-grandson Gerald Charles Dickens wrote, Charles Dickens ‘was extremely protective of The Life of Our Lord. He was well aware that anything from his pen would be snapped up, published, distributed, and then become part of the Dickens legend; he was determined that this one work would receive no such treatment. When Charles Dickens said that The Life of Our Lord was purely for family, he meant it’ (Charles Dickens, The Life of Our Lord. Written for his Children during the Years 1846-1849 (New York, 1999), p. 7). The manuscript was closely guarded within the Dickens family, and on Charles Dickens’s death in 1870 it passed to Georgina Hogarth (his sister-in-law) and from her to Sir Henry Fielding Dickens. In his will, Sir Henry – the last surviving child of the author – bequeathed the manuscript to his wife and children, with the instruction that they should decide by a vote whether to deposit the manuscript at the British Museum or publish it.

Following the death of Sir Henry in 1933, his family decided that The Life of Our Lord should be published, and sold the world publication rights to Associated Newspapers Limited for £40,000. The book appeared serially in The Daily Mail from 5 March to 17 March 1934, and was also syndicated internationally (according to Smith, it appeared ‘simultaneously in nearly two hundred different newspapers in America’). This first edition in book form was published on 15 May 1934 in two bindings: the standard cloth binding (as here) at 3s. 6d. and the deluxe, leather binding at 7s. 6d. Both issues are illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of the author and 8 plates, reproducing autograph manuscripts by the author and devotional paintings.

Carr, VanderPoel Dickens Collection, B520; Smith, Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth ... Part Two. The Christmas Books and Selected Secondary Works, 12.