The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 17 OCTOBER 1860
Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 340.
Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2
GAD'S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Wednesday Seventeenth October 1860
My Dear Mr Tauchnitz
I am very glad to receive your letter this morning, as I was just going to write to you.
The Uncommercial Traveller is finished for the present, but I may very probably write another series under the same title, bye and bye.3 I bring it to a close now, because I am about to produce in "All the Year Round", a new serial story of my own writing, which will be continued every week for Nine Months.4 It will be rather longer than "A Tale of Two Cities". Its title will be: "Great Expectations."5
I shall be happy to concede to you, as usual, the right of republishing "Great Expectations", and will take care that you have the last sheets in due time.6 I am also happy to reply to your question concerning "The Uncommercial Traveller", that it is at your service, on any terms you think right.
I have omitted to mention that the first No. of "Great Expectations" will be published on the 1st of December.7
Having a pretty house and grounds here, to which I am much attached, I have sold my home in London.8 But on my daughter's account, I purpose always having a house in London in what we call "The Season" – that is to say from February9 to June.10 When you next come over to England, I hope you will ensure me the opportunity of seeing you. Even this place is within an hour and a half's railway ride of "All the Year Round" office.11
Charles is now in India, and has been in China and Japan. He will probably return home, early in next year.12 My daughter13 (I use the singular number, now my second daughter is married),14 begs me to say that it would give her the greatest pleasure to receive Mrs Tauchnitz and any of your family. She and her aunt15 send their kindest regard.
Believe me my Dear Mr Tauchnitz
Always Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
- 1. Baron Bernhard Christian Tauchnitz (1816-95), publisher, of Leipzig. Born at Schleinitz; nephew of the publisher Karl Tauchnitz. Founded his own firm in Leipzig in 1837. The firm began its “Collection of British Authors” Sep 1841 with Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham. Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and American Notes had appeared before the end of 1842, and Nicholas Nickleby in June 1843. He and CD became friendly, and CD sent Charley to Leipzig to learn German. According to John Forster, Tauchnitz always paid liberally. He wrote to Forster after CD’s death: “All Mr Dickens’s works have been published under agreement by me. My intercourse with him lasted nearly twenty-seven years. The first of his letters dates in October 1843, and his last at the close of March, 1870 [see To Tauchnitz, 31 March 1870]. Our long relations were not only never troubled by the least disagreement, but were the occasion of most hearty personal feeling; and I shall never lose the sense of his kind and friendly nature. On my asking him his terms for Edwin Drood, he replied, ‘Your terms shall be mine’” (John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J.W.T. Ley, p. 807n).
- 2. Böhnke published his transcription of this letter, with some annotation, in 'The Correspondence between Charles Dickens and Bernhard Tauchnitz: General Observations and Newly Discovered Letters', Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013), pp. 327-8.
- 3. The first series of Uncommercial Traveller sketches ran from 28 Jan 1860 to 13 October 1860. The second series began on 2 May 1863.
- 4. The novel in fact ran for eight months.
- 5. Great Expectations ran in All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861, in 35 weekly parts. A Tale of Two Cities ran to 31 parts.
- 6. Tauchnitz published Great Expectations as volumes 547 and 548 of his Collection of British Authors series, in 1861.
- 7. In All the Year Round 4: 169-74.
- 8. CD sold Tavistock House on 21 August 1860.
- 9. 'January' deleted.
- 10. CD rented 3 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, from 14 February to 15 June, 1861.
- 11. The All the Year Round office was located at 26 Wellington Street, Strand.
- 12. Charley Dickens (1837-96) returned from China (where he had been buying tea) at the end of January 1861. He had met Tauchnitz in Leipzig in 1853.
- 13. Mamie Dickens (1838-96).
- 14. Katey Dickens married Charles Allston Collins on 17 July 1860.
- 15. Georgina Hogarth (1827-1917), CD’s sister-in-law.