NEW YORK, NY.- Bonhams announced the October 18th sale of The Robert H. and Donna L. Jackson Collection, one of the world’s finest collections of Victorian Literature as published in original parts and serial publications of the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection will be open for public view a week prior to the sale.

The sale of over 270 lots, expected to fetch up to $1.5 million, includes the first editions of the greatest novelists of the mid-19th century. There is an almost complete collection of Dickens’s published novels in parts; a very rare complete collection of all Trollope novels published in parts (perhaps the only such collection in the world); the Surtees ‘Jorrocks‘ series; an extensive collection of books and correspondence relating to Ainsworth’s novel ‘The Tower of London’; 16 novels by the Irish writer Charles Lever, most published in parts in London and Dublin; 12 works by George Eliot, several in parts; 25 works by Thackeray and a plethora of novelists from 1830 to 1880. Together they form the treasure-chest that is the Jackson collection.

The Jackson Collection was formed in America over the last 35 years and without doubt is one of the finest collections, not just in the extent and number of books published in parts, but in the rarity of many of the books (many have not been seen in the open market for 30 years). More remarkably the collection is in extremely good, and often pristine condition, making this group of books particularly special. The Jacksons pursued these books in auctions, from collectors and from book-dealers all over the world, upgrading the quality of copies when appropriate, and rejecting the poorer examples that mainly come to the market.

Publishing a book in parts began in England around 1700. This allowed authors to write/publish a chapter a month, each chapter containing sufficient action and excitement to keep the adoring public ready for the next installment. The cost of each part at a shilling was affordable for the working man and provided the author with a regular income.

The Collection, however, goes wider than the Victorian novelist and includes part works from other countries and periods, such as the second Boston edition of Shakespeare in 1807; Tusser’s Points of Husbandry, 1710, in parts; many of Ruskin’s works in parts; the Audubon octavo Quadrupeds in parts; Bibles in parts; Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, in parts; the John Martin illustrated Milton Paradise Lost 1825, all in parts; works by Browne; many by Cruikshank, Carey, A’Beckett, Marryat and many others…a veritable bookman’s dream.