The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 31 MARCH 1859

Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND Thursday Thirty First March 1859

My Dear Mr Tauchnitz

I enclose you the advertisement of my new weekly publication,3 from which you will learn when it begins, and also that it will contain, from week to week, a new story by me.4 That story will extend over about 8 months

Will you let me know, at your convenience, what arrangement you may desire to make with me in reference to this new undertaking?5

My daughters6 and their Aunt7 beg to be kindly remembered to all your family; in which I cordially join.

Believe me always I Very faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

• 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. Böhnke published his transcription, with brief annotation, in "The Correspondence between Charles Dickens and Bernhard Tauchnitz: General Observations and Newly Discovered Letters", Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013), p. 327.
• 3. All the Year Round, which Dickens established as a replacement for Household Words, because of his quarrel with the printers, Bradbury & Evans, who refused to print the official announcement of his separation from his wife Catherine in their other publications.
• 4. A Tale of Two Cities, published weekly from 30 April to 26 November 1859.
• 5. A Tale of Two Cities appeared as Vols. 479 and 480 in the Tauchnitz "Collection of British Authors" (1859).
• 6. Mamie Dickens (1836-96) and Katey Dickens (1839-1929).
• 7. CD's sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth (1827-1917), who managed his household after his separation from his wife Catherine in 1858.