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The letters of
Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
, of which more than 14,000 are known, range in date from about 1821, when Dickens was 9 years old, to 8 June 1870, the day before he died. They have been described as "invariably idiosyncratic, exuberant, vivid, and amusing…widely recognized as a significant body of work in themselves, part of the Dickens canon". They were written to family, friends, and the contributors to his literary periodicals, who included many of the leading writers of the day. Their letters to him were almost all burned by Dickens because of his horror at the thought of his private correspondence being laid open to public scrutiny. The reference edition of Dickens's letters is the 12-volume Pilgrim Edition, edited by Graham Storey ''et al.'' and published by
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.


Dickens as a letter-writer

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...
received, by his own count, 60 to 80 letters every day, and when pressure of work permitted he replied to them without delay. For most of his life he did not employ a secretary but conducted his correspondence himself. Exceptions were made for begging letters, which his sister-in-law
Georgina Hogarth Georgina Hogarth (22 January 1827 – 19 April 1917) was the sister-in-law, housekeeper, and adviser of English novelist Charles Dickens and the editor of three volumes of his collected letters after his death. Biography 'Georgy' Hogarth was o ...
answered, and for routine business connected with his two magazines, ''
Household Words ''Household Words'' was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s. It took its name from the line in Shakespeare's ''Henry V'': "Familiar in his mouth as household words." History During the planning stages, titles origi ...
'' and '' All the Year Round'', which was handled by his assistant editor W. H. Wills, although Dickens preferred to correspond with the contributors himself. He wrote with a goose quill rather than a steel pen, and at first used black ink (now aged to brown), switching in the late 1840s to blue ink on blue paper. His biographer
Fitzgerald The FitzGerald/FitzMaurice Dynasty is a noble and aristocratic dynasty of Cambro-Norman, Anglo-Norman and later Hiberno-Norman origin. They have been peers of Ireland since at least the 13th century, and are described in the Annals of the ...
described his handwriting as "so 'prompt', so alert, finished and full of purpose and decision; legible also, but requiring familiarity and training to read". He often ended his signature with an exuberant flourish, which became a kind of trademark.


His correspondents

Dickens's correspondents spanned the whole social scale of 19th century England from reformed street prostitutes to
Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...
herself. They included family members, of course, and Dickens's publishers; writers like
Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...
,
Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...
,
Wilkie Collins William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for ''The Woman in White (novel), The Woman in White'' (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for ''The Moons ...
,
George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wro ...
, John Forster,
Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
(not yet ennobled), and
William Makepeace Thackeray William Makepeace Thackeray (; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was a British novelist, author and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel '' Vanity Fair'', a panoramic portrait of British society, and t ...
; the artists
Clarkson Stanfield Clarkson Frederick Stanfield (3 December 179318 May 1867) was a prominent English painter (often inaccurately credited as William Clarkson Stanfield) who was best known for his large-scale paintings of dramatic marine subjects and landscapes. ...
and
Daniel Maclise Daniel Maclise (25 January 180625 April 1870) was an Irish history painter, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who worked for most of his life in London, England. Early life Maclise was born in Cork, Ireland, the son of Alexan ...
; and the actor
William Macready William Charles Macready (3 March 179327 April 1873) was an English actor. Life He was born in London the son of William Macready the elder, and actress Christina Ann Birch. Educated at Rugby School where he became headboy, and where now the ...
. Letters to several of his friends have little or no representation in the surviving correspondence because they were destroyed by the recipients, their heirs, or by random accidents of history. These correspondents include his daughter
Katey Katey is a given name, a variant spelling of Katie and Katy. Notable people with the name include: * Katey Martin (born 1985), New Zealand cricketer *Katey Sagal (born 1954), American actress *Katey Stone (born 1966), American college ice hockey ...
,
Augustus Egg Augustus Leopold Egg RA (2 May 1816, in London – 26 March 1863, in Algiers) was a British Victorian artist, and member of The Clique best known for his modern triptych '' Past and Present'' (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class ...
,
Chauncy Hare Townshend Chauncy Hare Townshend, whose surname was spelt by his parents as Townsend (20 April 1798, Godalming, Surrey – 25 February 1868), was a 19th-century English poet, clergyman, mesmerist, collector, dilettante and hypochondriac. He is mostly r ...
, Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"),
Richard Barham Richard Harris Barham (6 December 1788 – 17 June 1845) was an English cleric of the Church of England, a novelist and a humorous poet. He was known generally by his pseudonym Thomas Ingoldsby and as the author of ''The Ingoldsby Legends''. ...
,
James Muspratt James Muspratt (12 August 1793 – 4 May 1886) was a British chemical manufacturer who was the first to make alkali by the Leblanc process on a large scale in the United Kingdom. Early life James Muspratt was born in Dublin of English parent ...
, and his lover
Ellen Ternan Ellen Lawless Ternan (3 March 1839 – 25 April 1914), also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Wharton-Robinson, was an English actress known for association with the author Charles Dickens. Birth and family life Ellen Ternan was born in Roche ...
.


Subject matter

The letters are the only extended autobiographical writing by Dickens that has survived. Attempts at writing a diary seldom lasted long and for the most part the manuscripts are lost, while a memoir of his childhood was discontinued and converted into some of the early chapters of ''
David Copperfield ''David Copperfield'' Dickens invented over 14 variations of the title for this work, see is a novel in the bildungsroman genre by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from inf ...
''. The letters therefore give the most immediate and vivid expression of Dickens's life as seen by himself, even though they rarely examine his interior life. They give a unique insight into the way Dickens's processes of composition worked as he wrestled with the novels he published and considered others which were never written, such as the "book whereof the whole story shall be on the top of the
Great St. Bernard it, Colle del Gran San Bernardogerman: Grosser Sankt Bernhard , photo = Great St Bernard Pass.jpg , photo_caption = View of the pass and hospice from Great St Bernard Lake with Mont Vélan in background , elevation_m = 2469 , elevation_ref = ...
". Dickens's almost constant travelling is also reflected.
George Gissing George Robert Gissing (; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include ''The Nether World'' (1889), ''New Grub ...
wrote that "If he makes a tour in any part of the British Isles, he writes a full description of all he sees, of everything that happens, and writes it with such gusto, such mirth, such strokes of fine picturing, as appear in no other private letters ever given to the public." The range of subject-matter of the letters is described by his editor, Jenny Hartley:
Scotland, Paris, and Venice ... child exploitation,
Ragged Schools Ragged schools were charitable organisations dedicated to the free education of destitute children in 19th century Britain. The schools were developed in working-class districts. Ragged schools were intended for society's most destitute children ...
, and soup kitchens ...
the Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took pl ...
, women smoking, and dresses for reformed prostitutes ... ravens, waistcoats, and recipes for punch ...
mesmerism Animal magnetism, also known as mesmerism, was a protoscientific theory developed by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century in relation to what he claimed to be an invisible natural force (''Lebensmagnetismus'') possessed by all livi ...
and dreams ... terrible acting and wonderful children's birthday parties".


Manuscripts

Dickens's early sensational success as the author of ''
The Pickwick Papers ''The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club'' (also known as ''The Pickwick Papers'') was Charles Dickens's first novel. Because of his success with ''Sketches by Boz'' published in 1836, Dickens was asked by the publisher Chapman & Hall to s ...
'' induced many people to keep any letters he might send them. This, along with his huge output of letters, ensured that many thousands have survived. In 1965 the editors of his letters reckoned them to number nearly 12,000; by 2002 they had amended the total to 14,252. Though some letters are in private hands, most are now in libraries and public institutions. The largest collection is held by the
Charles Dickens Museum The Charles Dickens Museum is an author's house museum at 48 Doughty Street in King's Cross, in the London Borough of Camden. It occupies a typical Georgian terraced house which was Charles Dickens's home from 25 March 1837 (a year after h ...
in London, the second largest by the
Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
, and the third largest by the
Morgan Library & Museum The Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is situated at 225 Madison Avenue, between 36th Street to the south and 37th S ...
in New York; other extensive collections are held by the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
, the
New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
, the
Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) in San Mar ...
, and the
Free Library of Philadelphia The Free Library of Philadelphia is the public library system that serves Philadelphia. It is the 13th-largest public library system in the United States. The Free Library of Philadelphia is a non-Mayoral agency of the City of Philadelphia gove ...
. In contrast, few letters to Dickens are known. Dickens often expressed his opposition to the publication of private letters, and was determined to suffer from it himself as little as possible. He burned those letters that had been sent to him in a mass bonfire in 1860, commenting, "Would to God that every letter I had ever written was on that pile". He burned more in 1869, the year before he died. As a result, hardly more than 250 letters to Dickens have survived to the present day.


Editions

The reading public's first chance to study large numbers of Dickens letters came shortly after his death with the publication of ''The Life of Charles Dickens'' (1872–74) by his lifelong friend John Forster. Many of Dickens's letters to Forster were included, but they were heavily and rather dishonestly edited to make Forster seem a more central figure in Dickens's life than he had always been. In 1878 it was announced that a collection of Dickens's letters would be edited by his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. In collaboration with Dickens's eldest daughter
Mary Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
she duly produced ''The Letters of Charles Dickens'' in three volumes, which were published by
Chapman & Hall Chapman & Hall is an imprint owned by CRC Press, originally founded as a British publishing house in London in the first half of the 19th century by Edward Chapman and William Hall. Chapman & Hall were publishers for Charles Dickens (from 1840 ...
between 1880 and 1882. A second edition in two volumes followed in 1882, and a third in one volume, published by
Macmillan MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to: People * McMillan (surname) * Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan * Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician * James MacMillan, Scottish composer * William Duncan MacMillan ...
, in 1893. Altogether they included roughly a thousand letters; but many were heavily cut for reasons of taste, and some were created by cut-and-pasting together extracts from several different letters in a way which was considered unacceptable even by late-Victorian standards. 1938 saw the publication in three volumes of almost 6,000 of the letters, edited by Walter Dexter as part of the Nonesuch Edition of Dickens's Works. This was an expensively-priced edition limited to 877 copies, and was therefore not easily accessible to the ordinary reader unless he had either ample means or access to a university library. Moreover, Dexter's editorial practices were far from rigorous: there was hardly any annotation, and many of the letters were simply copied from previous editions rather than from the originals, with the inevitable result that the texts were not always accurate. In 1949 the publisher
Rupert Hart-Davis Sir Rupert Charles Hart-Davis (28 August 1907 – 8 December 1999) was an English publisher and editor. He founded the publishing company Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. As a biographer, he is remembered for his ''Hugh Walpole'' (1952), as an editor, f ...
set a new edition in motion, with a grant of £6000 from the
Pilgrim Trust The Pilgrim Trust is a national grant-making trust in the United Kingdom. It is based in London and is a registered charity under English law. It was founded in 1930 with a two million pound grant by Edward Harkness, an American philanthropist. T ...
and the Dickens scholar Humphry House in place as editor. In 1955, with almost 10,000 letters transcribed, House died unexpectedly. His widow Madeline House took over the project in collaboration with the critic
Graham Hough Graham Goulden (or Goulder) Hough (14 February 1908 – 5 September 1990) was an English literary critic, poet, and Professor of English at Cambridge University from 1966 to 1975. Life Graham Hough was born in Great Crosby, Lancashire, the son o ...
, though Graham Storey soon took over Hough's role. The first volume of the Pilgrim Trust Edition, as it was named, was eventually published by
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
under their Clarendon Press imprint in 1965, and 11 more volumes appeared periodically, the last one in 2002. The editorial team changed over the years, with Madeline House, Graham Storey,
Kathleen Tillotson Kathleen Mary Tillotson CBE (3 April 1906 – 3 June 2001) was a British academic and literary critic, professor of English and distinguished Victorian scholar. Her various works on Elizabethan literature have accumulated significance in the lit ...
, K. J. Fielding, Nina Burgis and Angus Easson all being named as editor at various points. The
British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...
took over the financing of the project, and from 1995 it was renamed the British Academy – Pilgrim Trust Edition. An electronic version of the edition has been published by
InteLex Past Masters InteLex Past Masters is a collection of full-text database, full-text web application, web-based scholarly editions of classic works in the humanities. InteLex Corporation was founded in 1989 by its current chief executive officer, Mark Rooks, to pr ...
. The Pilgrim Edition includes some 14,000 letters addressed to 2,500 known correspondents and to more than 200 unnamed and unidentifiable ones. Not all of the originals of these letters can be found; some are printed from short extracts in sale catalogues and similar sources, and some are only known from mentions of their existence in other letters. Dickens's biographer
Claire Tomalin Claire Tomalin (née Delavenay; born 20 June 1933) is an English journalist and biographer, known for her biographies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft. Early life Tomalin was born Claire Del ...
reported that "Each volume of this edition wins acclaim as it appears, and it is right that it should do so"; one such critic thought that "it brings Dickens so close you can almost smell the cigar smoke". Dissenting voices have been few, and though Joel J. Brattin noted that there were some errors and omissions of transcription he endorsed it as being in general extremely accurate, and thought the project as a whole "of incomparable value". New Dickens letters are discovered at the rate of about 20 per year, and they were for some years edited and published in Supplements to the Pilgrim Edition in ''The Dickensian'', the journal of the
Dickens Fellowship The Dickens Fellowship was founded in 1902, and is an international association of people from all walks of life who share an interest in the life and works of Victorian era novelist Charles Dickens. The Dickens Fellowship's head office is based ...
. They have also been made accessible online by the Charles Dickens Letters Project, and it is intended eventually to publish a supplementary volume to the Pilgrim Edition.


Selections

The costliness of both the Nonesuch and Pilgrim volumes, and the fragmentary or routine business nature of many of the letters included, has encouraged the publication of selections of Dickens's letters, intended for the general reader rather than the scholar. In 1985 David Paroissien edited ''The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens'', taking his texts from the Nonesuch Edition, substantive textual variants from the first five volumes of the Pilgrim Edition (the only ones then published) being listed in the notes. The scholar
John Espey John Jenkins Espey (15 January 1913 – 26 September 2000) was a novelist, memoirist and literary scholar, born in Shanghai where his parents were Presbyterian missionaries. Espey returned to the United States to study at Occidental College in 1 ...
wrote that this selection constitutes "a full review of almost all that we know of Dickens's activities as editor, public figure, father, husband, lecturer and lover", and that it "should satisfy for some time both the general reader and the specialist". In 2012, Dickens's bicentenary year, Jenny Hartley edited a one-volume selection from the Pilgrim Edition. Claire Harman, writing in the ''
Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...
'', welcomed it with enthusiasm, while noting the sparse annotation and the fact that Hartley had chosen a representative selection of the letters, including a few rather trivial ones, rather than "a series of epistolary knock-out blows". Boyd Tonkin, in the ''
Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...
'', found it to be "edited with unobtrusive intelligence and insight",
Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Bla ...
thought it "more revealing and more intimate than any biography", and the critic
Nicholas Lezard Nicholas Andrew Selwyn LezardThe Cambridge University List of Members up to 31 December 1991, Cambridge University Press, p. 814 is an English journalist, author and literary critic. Background and education The Lezard family went from London to Ki ...
recommended it in the ''
Guardian Guardian usually refers to: * Legal guardian, a person with the authority and duty to care for the interests of another * ''The Guardian'', a British daily newspaper (The) Guardian(s) may also refer to: Places * Guardian, West Virginia, Unite ...
'' with the words, "The whole book bursts with the author’s energy, and you will love him and know him better after reading even a few of these letters." Also in 2012, a 4-hour audiobook was issued by
Naxos Naxos (; el, Νάξος, ) is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture. The island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern times was one of the best abr ...
under the title ''Charles Dickens: A Portrait in Letters'', the readers being David Timson and
Simon Callow Simon Phillip Hugh Callow (born 15 June 1949) is an English film, television and voice actor, director, narrator and writer. He was twice nominated for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his roles in ''A Room with a View (1985 ...
. One reviewer wrote that they "create myriad personalities with varying accents, tones, class distinctions, and personal idiosyncrasies that are nearly flawless".


Footnotes


References

* * * * *


External links


The Charles Dickens Letters Project
{{Charles Dickens Books published posthumously Correspondences Works by Charles Dickens