The Charles Dickens Letters Project

Period: 
1851-1860
Theme(s): 
publishing
gifts

To SYDNEY WILLIAMS,1 21 FEBRUARY 1852

Text from facsimile from unknown source.

Tavistock House

Twenty First February 1852

Dear Sir

            I am very much obliged to you for your curious present, which is highly acceptable to me and which I receive with great pleasure and many thanks.

                                    Faithfully yours      

                                    CHARLES DICKENS

Sydney Williams Esquire.

  • 1. Edmund Sydney Williams (1817-91), of Williams & Norgate, 19 Henrietta St, Covent Garden and 2 Queen's Passage, publisher and bookseller. Spent some of his childhood in Germany; on moving to London he lodged briefly with the Hogarth family, and described Mary (CD's sister-in-law) as “one of the sweetest girls I ever saw” (unpublished autobiography, available at http://www.williams.gen.nz/edmund.html). From 1850 he acted as the London agent for Bernhard Tauchnitz, CD's authorised Continental publisher.