The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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How to cite:

Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

Database:

Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

editing

All the Year Round

friends

To FLORENCE MARRYAT,1 13 FEBRUARY 1860

Text from facsimile in Bonhams online catalogue, March 2016.

TAVISTOCK HOUSE,

TAVISTOCK SQUARE,

LONDON. W.C.

Monday Thirteenth February 1860

Dear Miss Marryat.

You have no idea of the labor inseparable from the editing of such a Journal as All The Year Round, when you suppose it within the bounds of possibility that2 those who discharge such duties can give critical reasons for the rejection of papers. To read proffered contributions honestly, and communicate a perfectly unprejudiced decision respecting every one of them to its author or authoress, is a task of the magnitude of which you evidently have no conception.

Mr Wills,3 whom you seem to mistrust, was so clear about that paper of yours which you suppose to have been accepted by me without his intervention (as I read your note), that he first shewed it to me in print. He feels quite sure that I should take it, and I did.

Pray consider, rationally, that I could in no case have but one object and one interest – to get the best writing possible. In your case I should have the additional inducement (if I wanted it) to be very careful in the remembrance of my responsibility, that your name is associated with an old friend4 and a great regard.

I cannot, however, alter what seems to be the fact regarding this story (for instance), any more5 than I can alter my eyesight or my hearing. I do not deem it suitable to my Journal. You ask me to pass my pen over the paragraphs which displease me. Surely that is scarcely reasonable. I do not think it is a good story. I think its leading incident common-place, and one that would require for its support some special observation of character, or strength of dialogue, or happiness of description. I do not find any of these sustaining qualities in it. I am not interested in the young people, therefore, and I cannot put away from myself the unfortunate belief that the readers of All The Year Round would not be interested in them. Thus it comes about, that I have the pain of returning the paper, when I would five hundred thousand times rather have the pleasure of accepting it.

Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS6

1. Florence Marryat (1838-99; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), daughter of Capt. Frederick Marryat (1792-1848; DNB: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 339n), prolific novelist, playwright, writer on spiritualism, actress and singer. Author of Life and Letters of Captain Marryat, 2 vols, 1872; ed. London Society, a monthly magazine, 1872-6.
2. 'for' deleted.
3. William Henry Wills (1810-80; Dictionary of National Biography), journalist, one of CD’s most trusted friends; assistant editor and part-proprietor of Household Words and All the Year Round.
4. Her father, Frederick Marryat, a prolific novelist, whose work CD admired.
5. 'any more' added above caret.
6. At the foot of the page, another hand has written: 'addressed to Miss Florence Marryat'.