The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THE EDITOR OF THE GLOBE,1 [?APRIL 1851]

Envelope only.
Text from facsimile in International Autograph Auctions online catalogue, 2013.

Address: With the Committee's Compliments2 | The Editor of | the Globe

• 1. The Globe was a London evening newspaper founded in 1803 as a booksellers' trade journal. In 1822 it absorbed The Traveller and became The Globe and Traveller. From 1830 it supported the Whig cause, with Lord Palmerston as its special patron, and often featured letters from Lord John Russell. For a history of the publication see James Beresford Atlay, The Globe and Traveller Centenary: A Sketch of Its History (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1903), and Sheila Rosenberg, "Some Further Notes on the History of the 'Globe': Its Editors, Managers, and Proprietors", Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 5.1 (1972): 40-47.
• 2. This reference is probably to the committee of nearly 70 individuals, including most of the country's leading writers, artists and scientists, formed to consider a public testimonial to William Jerdan, "for the constant and great services he has rendered to the literature, science, and art of this country, as editor of the Literary Gazette" (report in The Globe, 16 Apr 1851). Jerdan (1782-1869), founder of the Gazette in 1817 and sole proprietor since 1842, had been forced to sell it in Dec 1850 after financial disasters involving, he was convinced, "gross malignity" against him (Autobiography, 1852-3, vol. 4, p. 362); he was left virtually without an income. The committee, of which CD's friend John Forster was a prominent member, had its first meeting on 14 Apr 1851, and ultimately raised a fund of over £900 for him; CD contributed 10 guineas. Jerdan had applied to Lord John Russell for a Civil List pension in July 1850, but had been unsuccessful; in 1853 he was granted one, of £100 per annum.