The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To FREDERIC OUVRY,1 30 OCTOBER 1869
MS Farrer & Co.
OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND,
Saturday Thirtieth October 1869
My Dear Ouvry
Here follow the heads of a little agreement I want drawn up in due form between myself and Chapman and Hall.2 I suppose it had best be a separate agreement, apart from that which you now have in hand?3 But you will know all about that.
Secrecy is important, and particularly as to the name of the book.
Faithfully Yours ever
CHARLES DICKENS
Frederic Ouvry Esquire,
I shall be here next Wednesday and Thursday afternoons
Over
Agreement refers to a book to be published in 12 monthly Nos. under the title of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The 1st monthly No. to be published in March 1870; the other Nos. to follow from month to month until the publication of the work is completed.
Chapman and Hall buy of C.D. for the sum of £7,500, the right of publishing 25,000 copies of every No. and also a halfshare in the copyright afterwards.
Half the above mentioned sum of £7,500 to be paid in cash on the publication of the first No. Half of the remainder to be paid in cash, on the publication of No. 6. The balance to be paid in cash, on the publication of No. 12.
All sales of Every No. over and above 25,000 copies to be accounted for in CD’s half yearly accounts with Chapman and Hall, as usual; and payment to be made under that head as usual in the case of all his other books
- 1. Frederic Ouvry (1814-81), CD's solicitor from 1856. Son of Peter Aimé Ouvry, of the Ordnance Office, descendant of an old French family; nephew of John Payne Collier. Partner in Robinson, King, and Ouvry, 13 Tokenhouse Yard, 1837; partner in Farrer, Ouvry, with his brothers-in-law F. W. and W. J. Farrer, 66 Lincoln's Inn Fields (Miss Coutts's solicitors), 1855-81. Fellow of Society of Antiquaries 1848; Treasurer 1854; President 1876. A well-known book collector.
- 2. The text of the agreement (dated 1 Feb 1870) for Edwin Drood, between CD, Frederic Chapman and Henry Merivale Trollope (son of the novelist Anthony Trollope, who owned a one-third interest in Chapman & Hall) is reprinted in Pilgrim Letters 12, pp. 720-1. See also To Frederic Chapman, 20 Aug 1869, in Pilgrim Letters 12, p. 398, for CD’s proposal to his publisher for a new story in twelve monthly numbers.
- 3. For the agreement between CD and Chapman & Hall for Our Mutual Friend, see Pilgrim Letters 11, pp. 477-8.