The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 31 MARCH 1870

Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND

Thursday Thirty First March 1870

My Dear Baron


I beg to acknowledge with thanks the safe receipt of your draft for £75, and also to return you the agreement between us, duly signed by myself3

Believe me always

Faithfully Your Friend

CHARLES DICKENS

The Baron Tauchnitz

• 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 41 with Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham. Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and American Notes had appeared before the end of 1842, and Nicholas Nickleby in June 43. 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 [this letter] at the close of 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 (featuring some errors) of this letter, together with brief annotation, in “The Correspondence between Charles Dickens and Bernhard Tauchnitz: General Observations and Newly Discovered Letters”, Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013), pp. 328-9.
• 3. The payment and agreement relate to the publication of Edwin Drood in the Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors, vols. 1100 and 1116. Payment was received into CD’s bank account with Coutts & Co. on 7 April 1870, as "Bill on Fruhling & Co." (the German bank Fruhling & Goschen, at 12 Austin Friars, London).