The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MESSRS LEA & BLANCHARD,1 13 FEBRUARY 1842

Text from facsimile in Profiles in History catalogue, Dec 2004. Address: Messrs. Lea and Blanchard / Philadelphia. Private

Carlton House, New York.2

Thirteenth February 1842.

My Dear Sirs.

I am cordially obliged to you for your thoughtful recollection of me, and for the box of books.3 Accept my best thanks. I shall be exceedingly glad to know you and shake hands with you when I come to Philadelphia – where I shall be, I hope, (though for a very few days) in a fortnight at furthest.4 I shall be glad to have too – of course between ourselves, some information from you on a business-point which occurs to my mind just now.5 The intelligence of the long faces6 had reached my ears before I received your letter. I am truly sorry for the cause of their elongation, and wish them short again with all my heart.  

Messrs. Lea and Blanchard

Dear Sirs / Always Faithfully Yours

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. See above, 26 Oct 37.
• 2. CD stayed at Carlton House, 12 Feb-5 Mar.
• 3. See Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 57n.
• 4. He arrived in Philadelphia on 5 Mar and Henry C. Carey, the former senior partner, entertained him on the 8th.
• 5. Presumably concerning the publication in America of his next novel.
• 6. Of disapproval, presumably, at his raising – in his speeches at Boston and Hartford – the subject of international copyright.