Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation

First published in 1848, this novel centres on Paul Dombey, a proud London merchant who wants a son to inherit the firm and barely notices his daughter Florence. Young Paul is frail and dies in childhood; Dombey then marries the proud widow Edith Granger, while the manager James Carker watches the house and the business. Florence grows up starved of affection, and the firm's credit, a railway age, and hangers-on at the Wooden Midshipman shop pull the family toward ruin and a late reckoning. The book is a family and commercial novel, not a treatise on Victorian trade.

Top edge gilt. Quarter-bound in maroon leather with maroon gilt ruled cloth boards. Dark red slipcase.