Dombey and Son

First published in monthly parts from 1846, this novel centres on Paul Dombey, a proud London merchant who values his infant son as heir to the firm and treats his daughter Florence as irrelevant. The boy's frail life, a second marriage to the penniless but self-possessed Edith Granger, and the plotting of the manager James Carker occupy the middle of the book. Settings include the firm's offices, a Brighton school, the railway's new cuttings, and the house where Florence waits. The conflict is between Dombey's idea of the firm as a dynasty and the human claims he refuses to see. It is a family and commercial novel, not a street crime story.

Bound in cream cloth printed with a montage of Keeping’s illustrations from the text, with dark red spine-label. Dark red endleaves. Dark red slipcase, with Dickens’s signature in gold.