The Charles Dickens Letters Project

"Quickly loading, searchable transcriptions are accompanied by detailed annotations that draw upon an extensive, extensible prosopography."

"The CDLP sheds light on angles of Dickens and his world that are both central and not immediately apparent from other sources. Undergraduate students might be fascinated to find out that the author of Oliver Twist wrote a detailed, animated letter of recommendation for a woman applying to work as a matron in an orphanage." (Rebecca Nesvet, Journal of Victorian Culture)

"Judicious use of editorial interventions elucidates the general meaning of each letter. . . . The Charles Dickens Letters Project constitutes a valuable digital resource for studying Dickens and the times in which he lived." (Lydia Craig, Dickens Quarterly)

This online resource publishes, free of charge, all the correspondence of Charles Dickens which has come to light since 2002, the year in which the final volume of the Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens was published. Each letter is assessed for its authenticity, and is then transcribed and annotated by our team of editors, each of whom is a world authority on various aspects of Dickens's life and work.

Our aim is to provide scholars, enthusiasts, and indeed anyone who wishes to know more about this fascinating Victorian personality, with open access to Dickens's letters, which tell us a great deal about the private and public lives of the most famous writer of his day.

The bulk of Dickens's letters, published in the Pilgrim Edition, are NOT available to the general public free of charge (but are available online through subscription). References to these letters appear on this website as "Pilgrim Letters", with the appropriate volume and page number(s).

This site only publishes all NEW Dickens correspondence, and features regular updates.

We do not publish facsimiles; however we have obtained permission from the Dickens family (the copyright owners for all unpublished material), to reproduce the texts of these letters.

We also undertake authentications of Dickens letters. If you are the owner of a Dickens letter, or if you represent a book dealer or auction house, please feel free to get in touch, and we will respond to your query.

Leon Litvack
Principal Editor