The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Correspondent

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:

1861-1870

Theme(s):

publishing

To MRS BRADFORD,1 1 APRIL 1862

Extract in Heritage Book Shop Inc., catalogue 2001; addressed Mrs Bradford; dated North Strand, London (Office of All the Year Round letterhead), First April 1862.

Madam,2 I cannot in the least remember the name you subscribe with your letter, nor have I the faintest recollection of any such book as “Tales of the Moor”.3 I suppose myself to be in fault but it is the plain truth. In any case, believe me it would be quite out of my power to do anything for your husband’s work that it could not do for itself. It’s long since I relinquished the ungenerous office of recommending MSS to publishers, but I can honestly assure you that I never once did so with success.

Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

1. Wife of John Bradford, of Pavilion Place, Newton Abbot; his Tales of the Moor, 1841, and other literary works, appeared under the pseudonym of Josias Homely.
2. “Madame” in source.
3. Two long stories interspersed with verse. CD had received the book in 1841 (Pilgrim Letters 2, pp. 426-7).