The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To EDWARD BULWER LYTTON,1 [LATE DECEMBER 1861]

Text from facsimile of fragment on AbeBooks website, 2020.

Date: CD wrote to Kent on 19 Dec 1861, offering assistance with his publishing project.

read.

Ever affecy

CD

Kent2 is an excellent fellow. And if you will give him my name as a subscriber for 2 copies,3 it will make the name worth 4 to him.

• 1. Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Bart, later 1st Baron Lytton (1803-73; Dictionary of National Biography), writer and politician. Became intimate with CD through their joint founding of the Guild of Literature and Art, 1850; this led CD to dedicate Bleak House to him. CD named his youngest child after Lytton, and changed the ending of Great Expectations after Lytton objected to the original.
• 2. William Charles Mark Kent (always known as Charles) (1823-1902; Dictionary of National Biography), poet, miscellaneous writer and journalist; eldest son of William Kent, RN, and nephew of Bishop Charles Baggs, Catholic Vicar-Apostolic of West England; a strict Roman Catholic. Educated at Prior Park, Bath, and St Mary's College, Oscott. Became editor of The Sun in 1845. His enthusiastic review of Dombey and Son led to his friendship with CD. Frequent contributor to Household Words and All the Year Round, and author of Charles Dickens as a Reader (1872). Kent was described by Percy Fitzgerald as a "faithful follower and worshipper" of Dickens (Memories of Charles Dickens, [Bristol: J.W. Arrowsmith, 1913], p. 319).
• 3. CD was among the subscribers to Dreamland, with Other Poems (1862, Kent's second collection), dedicated to Bulwer Lytton. This firm offer of a subscription follows on from CD's letter to Kent of 19 Dec 1861, in which he says, ' If I can serve your book in any way, of course I will do it and joyfully' (Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 545).