The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To CHARLES W. HOLDEN,1 19 SEPTEMBER 1848

Text from eBay, 2003. Address: C. W. Holden Esquire, New York, U.S. of America. By Post Office Steamer.  

Broadstairs, Kent | Nineteenth September 1848

Sir

I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated the eighth of last month and forwarded to me here, during a short absence from London. I have given your proposal every consideration, but I regret to add that I cannot entertain it. I do not see my way to any literary arrangement in America, which is made dependent on any kind of contingency. Nothing but a proposal to pay me, beforehand, and in this country, a certain sum of money for a certain undertaking and performance on my part, would remove the many otherwise [insuperable]2 obstacles that arise in my mind out of the distance between the two countries, and their several states of law and feeling in reference to literary property.3

I am not the less obliged to you for your offer and remain  

Faithfully yours 

CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Charles W. Holden, publisher of Holden’s Dollar Magazine of Criticisms, Biographies, Sketches, Essays, Tales, Reviews, Poetry, etc., a popular New York monthly (Jan 48-Mar 51), edited by Charles F. Briggs (1804-77).
• 2. “insufferable” in source.
• 3. CD was often exercised by “the defective and shameful state of the law of copyright as between different countries” (To Flügel, 27 Apr 48, Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 292). His outspoken views had provoked controversy on his American visit: see Pilgrim Letters 3, Preface and throughout.