The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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How to cite:

Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1861-1870

Theme(s):

friends

social engagements

To CHARLES READE1 [1860-62]

Replaces summary in Pilgrim Letters 10, p. 186.

Text of fragment from facsimile in Hampstead Auctions online catalogue, April 2016.

Date: Handwriting and signature suggest 1860-62.

I shall be here2 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, in next week. after3 tomorrow until Tuesday morning, I shall be at Gad's Hill.

Believe me always

Very faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

Charles Reade Esquire.

1. Charles Reade (1814-84; Dictionary of National Biography), novelist and dramatist, best known for The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). His pamphlet, The Eighth Commandment, 1860, attacking literary piracy and advocating wider international copyright, aroused CD's strong sympathy. Reade greatly admired CD, whom he referred to as "my master" (C. L. Reade and Compton Reade, Charles Reade, Dramatist, Novelist, Journalist. A memoir, Compiled Chiefly from His Literary Remains [London: Chapman & Hall, 1887], II, 37).
2. The All the Year Round office.
3. "From" deleted; "after" written above caret.