The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 15 NOVEMBER 1860

MS Alastair Jollans.

GAD'S HILL PLACE, | HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.

Thursday Fifteenth November, 1860.

My Dear Mr Tauchnitz

I willingly accept your proposal of £352 for the re-print of the Uncommercial Traveller.*3 In this, as in all other transactions, I have perfect confidence in you.

Enclosed is a list of the names of all the articles in the Series.

Faithfully Yours alwys

CHARLES DICKENS

*And Hunted Down

• 1. Baron Bernhard Christian Tauchnitz (1816-95), publisher, of Leipzig. Born at Schleinitz; nephew of the publisher Karl Tauchnitz. Founded his own firm in Leipzig in 1837. The firm began its “Collection of British Authors” Sep 1841 with Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham. Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and American Notes had appeared before the end of 1842, and Nicholas Nickleby in June 1843. He and CD became friendly, and CD sent Charley to Leipzig to learn German. According to John Forster, Tauchnitz always paid liberally. He wrote to Forster after CD’s death: “All Mr Dickens’s works have been published under agreement by me. My intercourse with him lasted nearly twenty-seven years. The first of his letters dates in October 1843, and his last at the close of March, 1870 [see To Tauchnitz, 31 March 1870]. Our long relations were not only never troubled by the least disagreement, but were the occasion of most hearty personal feeling; and I shall never lose the sense of his kind and friendly nature. On my asking him his terms for Edwin Drood, he replied, ‘Your terms shall be mine’” (John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J.W.T. Ley [London: Cecil Palmer, 1928], p. 807n).
• 2. CD’s bank account with Coutts & Co. shows receipt of £35, on 3 December 1860, from "Fruhling & Co." (the German bank Fruhling & Goschen, at 12 Austin Friars, London).
• 3. Tauchnitz published his volume as Hunted Down A Story, The Uncommercial Traveller A Series of Occasional Papers, in the "Collection of British Authors", vol. 536 (1860). The first series of The Uncommercial Traveller, consisting of 17 instalments from All the Year Round, was published by Chapman & Hall on 15 December 1860 (but featuring the date 1861 on the title page).