‘For the variation in the cloth cases of Dickens’s part-issued novels, they are so numerous and baffling that no one has yet attempted even to describe, let alone classify them.’ (Carter, Taste and Technique in Book-Collecting , Cambridge, 1948, p. 106).
‘The Standard Novels went on for so long and were so successful that they were continually reprinted and, by living on into periods of new binding fashions, continually re-clothed. In consequence, dates were altered, and bindings were altered; but not always simultaneously – so that combinations of right date with wrong binding and vice versa were continually occurring. Further, the reorganisation of the volumes carried through under the later imprint naturally reflected the change.
It will be useful, therefore, to set out the implications of date, imprint, and binding which are liable to be found on volumes of the series.’ (Michael Sadleir, XIX Century Fiction , 1955, ii. 95).