The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 8 NOVEMBER, 1865

Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2

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

Wednesday Eighth November 1865

My Dear Baron.


I beg to acknowledge the safe receipt this day, of your draft in payment of the second moiety of the sum agreed between us for "Our Mutual Friend."3 With thanks, and all good wishes for yourself and family, Believe me

As always

Very faithfully Yours

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 (see below). 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 (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), p. 329.
• 3. Our Mutual Friend was published in 1864-5 in the Tauchnitz "Collection of British Authors", simultaneously in monthly parts and as a four-volume set (nos. 730, 760, 780, 800) in the Tauchnitz series. CD received £150 for the novel, paid into his bank account with Coutts & Co. in two instalments of £75 each, on 3 May 1864 and 20 November 1865; this equates to a payment of £37.10s. per volume for this particular novel. Payments by Tauchnitz for other novels by CD ranged from £25-£100 per volume; see William B. Todd and Ann Bowden, Tauchnitz International Editions in English 1841-1955: A Bibliographical History (New Castle, Delaware and London: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 1988), pp. 120-21).