The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To EDWARD S. MORGAN,1 [17 OR 24 JANUARY 1838] 

MS Facsimile in Swann Auction Galleries online catalogue, March 2015.

                                                            Doughty Street | Tuesday Morning

My Dear Sir.

            As we have not room for Mr Sinnetts’2 paper, in consequence of its arriving so late in the month, I return it as you desire. Will you be good enough to leave instructions in the office that if "Aliquis"3 or anybody else sends about papers offered for the Miscellany, the reply is that his communication will be answered on the last day of the month?4

                                                            Faithfully Yours, My Dear Sir,                                    

CHARLES DICKENS

E. S. Morgan Esqre.

• 1. Edward S. Morgan, chief clerk and accountant for Richard Bentley 1829-58. In his "Brief Retrospect", 1873 (MS University of Illinois), Morgan claimed the credit for first noticing CD's originality and for persuading Bentley to negotiate with him. There is no evidence to support this; but Morgan was certainly in Bentley's confidence.
• 2. Thus in MS. Edward W. P. Sinnett (1799-1844) reporter for Morning Herald and translator. CD published his translation of "The Blue Wonder" from the German of Johann Heinrich Zschokke (Bentley’s Miscellany 1.450-61, May 1837) and "Artists and Works of Art" by Dr Wagen (Bentley’s Miscellany 3.173-81, February 1838). See Pilgrim Letters 1, pp. 252, 265, 354 and nn.
• 3. Unidentified; clearly a pseudonym.
• 4. Bentley’s Miscellany was published on the last day of the month. The issue published 31 January 1838 included "Notices to Correspondents", listing the authors whose articles were rejected (among them “Aliquis”).