The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To CHARLES KENT,1 [1864-5] 

Envelope only.2

Text from facsimile in Bonhams online catalogue, May 2020.

Address: Private. | Charles Kent Esquire | "Sun" office | Strand

Date: CD sent proofs of monthly numbers of Our Mutual Friend (1864-5) to Kent before they were published; see Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 6, 96, 99.

• 1. William Charles Mark Kent (always known as Charles) (1823-1902; Dictionary of National Biography), poet, miscellaneous writer and journalist; eldest son of William Kent, RN, and nephew of Bishop Charles Baggs, Catholic Vicar-Apostolic of West England; a strict Roman Catholic. Educated at Prior Park, Bath, and St Mary's College, Oscott. Editor of the Sun 1845-70 (proprietor 1850) and frequent contributor to Household Words. CD initially corresponded with Kent from 1848, in the latter's role as editor (see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 294); they later became good friends. Kent was the author of Charles Dickens as a Reader (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872).
• 2. Auctioneer's catalogue describes this item as a "large autograph envelope. . . no doubt originally containing manuscript copy"; the envelope probably contained the proof of a monthly number of Our Mutual Friend