A note about illustrations: This chapter is unillustrated for a reason.
Even if you don't think this warrants reading Waldin's 500 unillustrated pages, you will be hard pressed to avoid the subject in new wine books - and it's not always the zaniest aspect.
The novel was serialized weekly in All the Year Round between December 1860 and August 1861, and then, unusually for Dickens, published in three unillustrated volumes.
We pay $200 for the Idea of the Month, $100 for ideas with drawings, and $75 for unillustrated ideas.
The audience for obscenity, however, remained the rich: a paper-wrapped, unillustrated book cost a Victorian reader twenty guineas.