[Charles Dickens (1812-1870)] – auction catalogue
Catalogue of the Beautiful Collection of Modern Pictures, Water-Colour Drawings, and Objects of Art, of Charles Dickens deceased: which… will be sold by auction by Messrs. Christie, Manson & Woods… On Saturday, July 9, 1870. London: printed by W. Clowes & Sons, 1870.
Octavo (234 x 151mm). 11pp. (Some small stains and minor associated loss, 47mm tear just into printed area of final two leaves, some spotting, vertical crease throughout). Printed self-wrappers, sewn as issued. Provenance: Frederic Ouvry (Dickens’s solicitor, 1814-1881) – Sotheby’s, London, 13-14 March 1979, lot 354.

Rare auction catalogue of the pictures and decorative objects from the estate of Charles Dickens, from the library of his solicitor Frederic Ouvry and annotated with prices, buyer’s names and a running total. We are able to trace just one other copy in auction records in over 50 years. In his will, Dickens made his cherished sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth and his great friend and biographer John Forster joint executors of his estate and guardians of his children. When Dickens died in June 1870, Hogarth gave a number of his personal belongings to his closest friends and colleagues; the remaining property, excluding his library, was sold at one of two sales held almost immediately after Dickens's death: the first held by Christie's on 9 July 1870 of the ‘Pictures, Drawings and Objects of Art,’ the second by a local Rochester auction house Thomas & Thomas of ‘Household Furniture, Linen, Carriages [etc]’ from 10-13 August, 1870.