The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

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Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

publishing

All the Year Round

To EMILY EDEN,1 16 JANUARY 1860

Text from facsimile in Bonhams online catalogue, May 2020.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND
Monday SIxteenth January 1860.

My Dear Miss Eden.

I have read the MS you sent to my daughter Mary.2 I think there is, decidedly, promise in it; but I cannot possibly form an opinion on the interest of the story, because it is, as yet, hardly begun! And this brings me at once to the most difficult part of the question. The story moves very slowly, for the purposes of a periodical. I have not room here, for a long story — with a serial in progress,3 and others making ready to follow it. I cannot guess at this writer's4 design, because it is not indicated in all these sheets of paper; but I think sufficiently well of what I have read to desire to see the rest (if it be not a very Book in point of length), supposing the writer is inclined to submit the rest to me, on this limited encouragement.

Faithfully Yours ever

CHARLES DICKENS

1. The Hon. Emily Eden (1797-1869; Dictionary of National BIography), traveller and novelist; 7th daughter of William Eden, the 1st Baron Auckland. When in India with her brother, 1st Earl of Auckland, Gov.-General (see Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 421n), discovered CD's early work, partly in pirated editions, and wrote enthusiastically to her sister about it: e.g. in Feb 1839, "'Oliver Twist' we have read . . . and I like it very much–but 'Nicholas Nickleby' still better. . . . There never was such a man as Dickens! I often think of proposing a public subscription for him. . . . He is the agent for Europe fun" (Up the Country, 1866, vol. 2, pp. 75-6). In Sept 1839 she described friends acting scenes from Pickwick at a charity lunch in Simla (Up the Country vol. 2, p. 157). Besides Up the Country, published Portraits of the People and Princes of India (1844), and two novels, The Semi-Detached House (1859), and The Semi-Attached Couple (1860). A further collection of her entertaining letters was edited by her niece as Letters from India (2 vols., 1872).
2. Mary (Mamie) Dickens (1838-96), CD's daughter.
3. Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, published in 40 parts in All the Year Round, from 26 Nov 1859 to 25 Aug 1860.
4. Unidentified.