The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOHN FORSTER,1 28 APRIL 1869

MS Huntington Library. 

Wednesday Twenty Eighth April, 1869

My Dear Forster

Let us dine in Wellington Street tomorrow.2 I shall expect Mrs Forster3 and you at 6. 

Ever affecy

CD.

• 1. John Forster (1812-76; Dictionary of National Biography), historian and man of letters; CD’s closest friend, literary and legal advisor, and co-executor of his will. Compiled the authorised 3-volume biography The Life of Charles Dickens, 1872-4.
• 2. A rearrangement of CD’s proposal (To Forster, 26 Apr 1869) that the Forsters dine at Gad’s Hill, when CD did not “feel up to coming out to dinner”; see Pilgrim Letters 12, pp. 344-5.
• 3. Eliza Ann Forster, née Crosbie (1815-94), widow of the publisher Henry Colburn, whom Forster married, Sep 1856: see Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 114 & n.