A few months earlier, Lauriat had sold Field a rare volume of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, first published in December 1843. This copy had belonged to Dickens himself and was the one he entered into evidence in a series of legal actions he brought in early 1844 against “literary pirates” who had republished the story without his permission. On the inside of the book’s front and back covers, and elsewhere within, were notes about the lawsuits that had been jotted by Dickens himself. It was an irreplaceable work.
This is so cool; my dream hobby job!
