The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To FREDERIC CHAPMAN,1 16 MAY 1869

Text from facsimile in Symonds Rare Books online catalogue, July 2020.

Sunday Sixteenth May, 18692

 My Dear F.C.

    Will you send me a copy of the Ruined Cities of Zulu Land.3 — I think you published the book?

        Faithfully Yours alwys
        CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Frederic (or Frederick) Chapman (1823-95), publisher of CD’s works. He became a partner of Chapman and Hall in 1847, and took over the firm when his cousin Edward Chapman (1804-80) retired in 1864. From 1865 he also published the Fortnightly Review.
• 2. Embossment of the Athenaeum Club appears at the head of the letter.
• 3. Hugh Mulleneux Walmsley, The Ruined Cities of Zulu Land (2 vols.; London: Chapman and Hall, 1869). Walmsley (1826- 1879), was a soldier and writer of military fiction who had earlier published The Chasseur d’Afrique, and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1864). He was the son of the radical politician and Liverpool mayor Sir Joshua Walmsley (1794-1871), with whom CD had served on the short-lived Central Working Classes Committee of the Great Exhibition; see To Thomas Beggs, 25 April 1850, n4. The Ruined Cities of Zulu Land features a hunting trip conducted by two Europeans, Captain Hughes and the missionary Wyzinski. The majority of the tale revolves around the Europeans’ hunting and defending themselves against wild jungle animals (often alongside African warriors, who assist them to capture prey), and attempting to stay alive when caught up as pawns in political squabbles between contending tribes. This work was in CD’s library at his death; see J.H. Stonehouse, Catalogue of the Library of Charles Dickens (London: Piccadilly Fountain Press, 1935), p. 116.