The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To DUDLEY COSTELLO,1 27 DECEMBER 1860

Replaces mention in Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 352.

MS Brigham Young University.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND
Thursday Twenty Seventh December 1860.

My Dear Costello.

     Many thanks for your capital Christmas Book,2 which I have read by the fireside with the greatest pleasure. As an amiable exchange of Prisoners, I send you my Uncommercial Traveller.3

        With kind regard4 to Mrs Costello5

        Believe me ever

            Faithfully Yours

        CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Dudley Costello (1803-65; Dictionary of National Biography), author, journalist, and illustrator. Foreign correspondent for the Daily News 1846; frequent contributor to Bentley's Miscellany, the New Monthly Magazine, Household Words, and All the Year Round. His popular travel books included A Tour through the Valley of the Meuse (1845), and Piedmont and Italy, from the Alps to the Tiber (2 vols., 1859-61), both of which he illustrated. He wrote several novels, including Stories from a Screen (1855), The Millionaire of Mincing Lane (1858), and Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady (1859). His writing was never sufficiently remunerative; he received a civil list pension in 1861.
• 2. Holidays with Hobgoblins: And Talk of Strange Things, illustrated by George Cruikshank (London: John Camden Hotten, 1861).
• 3. The first series of 17 articles gathered from All the Year Round, published Jan 61; copies were ready by 15 Dec 60 (To Chapman, 5 Dec 60; Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 347 & n). The volume (into which this letter is pasted) is inscribed "Dudley Costello | With kind regard from | CHARLES DICKENS | Christmas, 1860."
• 4. Thus in MS.
• 5. Mary Frances, widow of J. D. Tweedy; née Higgins. Costello married her in 1843.