The Charles Dickens Letters Project

Period: 
1861-1870
Theme(s): 
editing
All the Year Round
publishing

To EDWARD EASTWICK,1 13 OCTOBER 1865

MS Joseph Rubinfine Autographs. Address: Edward Eastwick Esquire | 38 Thurlow Square | S.W. PM. OC 13 65.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

Friday Thirteenth October 1865

My Dear Mr. Eastwick

As we have now two serial stories2 publishing in these pages together, I wish to give each of your papers a separate name, so that each may seem, for the time being, complete.3 Will you let me know what title you would prefer for your first chapter,4 and will you let me have some more Manuscript to send to the Printer? It is unnecessary to remark, perhaps, that when you collect your papers, you can either use these separate headings as titles of chapters, or abolish them altogether.5

The Printer will send you a Revise6 of the first paper, and you can then append a title to the Proof.

Faithfully Yours alwys 

       CHARLES DICKENS

Edward Eastwick Esquire   

  • 1. Edward Backhouse Eastwick (1814-83; Dictionary of National Biography), orientalist and diplomat: see Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 5nn.
  • 2. At the Bar by Charles Collins and Half a Million of Money by Amelia B. Edwards.
  • 3. CD later noted that the public have a tendency, “having more than two serial stories to bear in mind at one time, to jumble them all together, and do justice to none of them” (Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 443). Eastwick’s papers on Venezuela, where he had been Commissioner for arranging Venezuela loans 1864 and 1867, appeared in All the Year Round, 4 Nov 65 – 28 Apr 66, XIV, 343 – XV, 366. There is no reference to the individual papers being part of a series. The All the Year Round volume indexes, though, give not only the specific titles, but also a general title, “Venezuela”, as well as alternative titles: e.g. “Erminia”, All the Year Round, 28 Apr 66, XV, 366, is indexed also under “Venezuela” and “Valencia, The Beauties of”.
  • 4. “To Venezuela: Sailing on a Friday”, All the Year Round, 4 Nov 65, XIV, 343.
  • 5. Eastwick’s Venezuela: or, Sketches of Life in a South American Republic; with a History of the Loan of 1864 (1868), retains the All the Year Round headings with minor variations and additions.
  • 6. A proof taken after corrections in the All the Year Round office of the preliminary proof.