1860 Dickens "Great Expectations" First Installment, Calhoun Tomb — Nov 24

🗞️ HARPER'S WEEKLY · November 24, 1860
Complete Issue · New York

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A historically exceptional literary issue — the first American installment of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, with a prefacing editorial, a portrait of Dickens himself, and the tomb of John C. Calhoun in Charleston on the front page just weeks before South Carolina's secession. Great Expectations — one of the greatest novels in the English language — is beginning its American serialization at the exact moment the American republic is approaching its greatest crisis. A primary document of Victorian literary history and American political history simultaneously.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📚 CHARLES DICKENS — "GREAT EXPECTATIONS" — FIRST INSTALLMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✍️ FIRST AMERICAN INSTALLMENT — "GREAT EXPECTATIONS" BY CHARLES DICKENS — WITH PREFACING EDITORIAL AND DICKENS PORTRAIT
The first American installment of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens — with a prefacing editorial introducing the novel to American readers — published simultaneously with its London serialization in Dickens's own journal All the Year Round. Great Expectations — the story of Pip, Miss Havisham, Magwitch, and Estella — is considered by many scholars to be the finest novel Dickens ever wrote, and among the greatest novels in the English language. Its opening scene — the convict rising from the graves in the Romney Marshes to grab young Pip by the throat — is one of the most celebrated openings in all of fiction. Dickens wrote Great Expectations partly as a response to the enormous success of A Tale of Two Cities — which had been serialized in the same pages of Harper's Weekly from April to December 1859 — and Harper's Weekly's American readership would follow Pip's story from his humble beginnings to his great expectations across the coming months. This is the actual Harper's Weekly page on which Great Expectations was first read by American audiences — a primary document of one of the most celebrated novels in literary history at the moment of its American debut. An essential piece of Victorian literary history.

🎨 ILLUSTRATION — "CHARLES DICKENS"
A portrait of Charles Dickens — the most famous novelist in the world, whose works had been serialized in Harper's Weekly across 1859-1860 and whose new novel was beginning in this very issue. A significant piece of Victorian literary portraiture.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🏛️ CALHOUN'S TOMB — CHARLESTON
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🏛️ FRONT PAGE — "TOMB OF JOHN C. CALHOUN, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA"
A front-page illustration of the tomb of John C. Calhoun in Charleston — the great Southern statesman and father of nullification and states' rights theory whose legacy was driving the secession movement that was about to tear the nation apart. Calhoun had died in 1850, but his doctrines of state sovereignty and nullification were the intellectual foundation of the secession crisis that Lincoln's election had triggered. This illustration of Calhoun's tomb in Charleston — published just twenty-six days before South Carolina's secession — is a primary document of the ideological heritage of the Confederacy at its most charged moment. A significant piece of Civil War origins history.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📋 CONDITION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I photograph every page of every issue so you can inspect the condition closely before purchasing. Please review all images carefully and don't hesitate to ask any questions — I'm happy to provide additional detail or close-up shots of any page, illustration, or area of concern before you buy.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📌 DETAILS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Publication ········ Harper's Weekly
Date ··············· November 24, 1860
City ──────────── New York
Format ············· Illustrated newspaper, complete in 16 pages

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📦 SHIPPING & PRESERVATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Stored in an acid-free protective bag and flat-shipped in a padded envelope with heavy cardboard reinforcement
• Fully tracked for your peace of mind

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔍 SEO TAGS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Great Expectations first installment, Dickens Great Expectations antique, Great Expectations serialized antique, Dickens first chapter antique, Great Expectations Harper's Weekly, Dickens American serialization, Great Expectations primary antique, Victorian literary antique, Pip Miss Havisham antique, Great Expectations debut antique, Dickens portrait antique, Dickens Harper's 1860, Calhoun tomb Charleston antique, John Calhoun tomb antique, Calhoun nullification antique, Charleston secession antique, Civil War origins antique, South Carolina secession antique, Harper's Weekly 1860, antique newspaper 1860, antebellum newspaper, Victorian illustrated newspaper, antique illustration engraving, framing quality print, Dickens collector, literary history collector, history lover gift, rare newspaper collectible, museum quality ephemera