Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son

Pre-dates book clubs. The specific tells: copies bound up from the monthly parts lack the half-title, the list of plates and the errata leaf, and are not the book-form first despite carrying the 1848 title page. Made-up sets in parts — assembled from odd numbers with facsimile wrappers, restored spines, or the wrong inserted advertisements — are the standing hazard, which is why collation against Hatton and Cleaver rather than mere presence of nineteen parts is the test. Later Bradbury and Evans / Chapman and Hall reprints, and the Cheap Edition and Charles Dickens Edition, are 'first thus' only.