1943 "The Dicken's Digest" 4 condensed books - First Edition!

The Dickens Digest - Four Great Dickens Masterpieces, condensed for the Modern Reader: 

David Copperfield  

Pickwick Papers

Oliver Twist

Martin Chuzzlewit

Condensed by Mary Louise Aswell and Illustrated by Donald McKay. Published by Whittlesey House and Kingsport Press.

Editor's Note: "In Everybody," Chesterson says, "there is a thing that loves babies, that fears death, that likes sunlight; that thing enjoys Dickens." In everybody, that is, who reads him. But there is a growing majority of people who "always wanted to read Dickens, but never got around to it," or who loved him as a child but know that if they read him again particularly if they read him aloud, they would be bound to skip. This book is for them.

What the Dickens Digest offers in not a skeleton of the novels chosen, but the essential narrative in the words of its creator, freed of the prolixity that annoys modern readers. I have been a Dickens lover for too long a time to be willing for anybody to miss the pleasure and privilege of reading him. My purpose has been to reproduce faithfully scenes, dialogues, descriptions that acquaint the reader with the essential Dickens, omitting nothing that contributes to the rapid progress of the stories and the characters....

Book is in very good condition, 543 pages, and weighing 2 pounds, 8 ounces. Clean throughout and tightly bound. Green cloth cover shows one wrinkle. Gold imprints on the spine are not faded. A trace of shelf wear.