4TO, 52+ pgs., B/W Illus Hardcover: Black cloth binding with title in gold on frontboard. Corners are worn. Lower edge of front board is frayed in spots.Endpapers soiled and foxed. Paper clip mark to second free endpaper and title page. Rear hinge cracked. Binding is still nice and tight. Text is clean. Dickens wrote "The Life of My Lord" for his children in 1849 and did not intend it to be published. The work stayed in the family until the death of Dicken's last child Henry Fielding Dickens, when the Dickens family finally decided to sell the rights to the piece. The rights were sold in the UK to Associated Newspapers Ltd and in the US to United Features Syndicate. General Manager Monte Bourjaily of United Features, whose card is paper clipped to the ffep of this book, sold the rights to the piece as a newspaper serial which would run as daily serialized versions in newspapers across the United States from March 5th to March 20th 1934. In addition book rights were sold to Simon & Schuster which published a limited edition as well as a trade edition. The dates of the newspaper serialization were strictly administered. Each newspaper that purchased the rights to the piece were given very specific dates when to run each installment so they would all publish on the same days. Each newspaper was given a copy of the piece in advance with specific instructions that they could not even announce the upcoming Dickens serial until February 16, 1934. This is the prepublication copy sent to the newspapers, as it has the publication warnings. It is the true First American Edition.

Fiction