The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To GEORGE CRUIKSHANK,1 [15 DECEMBER 1840]

MS Sotheby's; accompanied, on the other half of the page, by three original pencil sketches by Cruikshank of a figure in a cape or shawl, and bonnet. 

My Dear Cruikshank,

            I inclose you the proofs of one volume;2 and the Farce.3 When you have decided on the subject from the latter, will you let me know, in order that I may keep the Text as you desire?4

            I have marked in the little written index which you will find inside the cover of the book, Allan's paper5 and one of Maxwell's.6 The last is sure to yield a subject.7

                                                                        Faithfully Always

                                                                                    CD

Tuesday fifteenth December

• 1. George Cruikshank (1792-1818; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), artist, caricaturist and CD's first illustrator.
• 2. The Pic Nic Papers (1841), in three volumes, edited and introduced by CD, for the benefit of the widow and children of the publisher John Macrone. Cruikshank and Phiz provided the illustrations.
• 3. "The Lamplighter's Story", which CD had originally conceived as a farce for the actor William Charles Macready, who had rejected it (see Pilgrim Letters 1: 465); it was eventually converted to a prose narrative and published as the lead story in the first volume of The Pic Nic Papers (1: 1-32).
• 4. Cruikshank produced the illustration "The Philosopher's Stone" to accompany "The Lamplighter's Story".
• 5. Allan Cunningham (1784-1842; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), Scottish writer and stonemason; the father of Peter Cunningham, later CD's friend. Edited Burns 1834; wrote Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1829-1833; also songs and short stories. Secretary and superintendent of the works to Sir Francis Chantrey, the sculptor, 1814-41. He contributed "Jean Cameron's College" to The Pic Nic Papers (1: 159-70). For CD's invitation to contribute to the project see Pilgrim Letters 1: 372.
• 6. William Hamilton Maxwell (1792-1850), a frequent contributor to Bentley’s Miscellany. Cruikshank executed illustrations for Maxwell’s History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 (1845). He contributed "The Expedition of Major Ap Owen to the Lakes of Killarney" to The Pic Nic Papers (1: 172-89).
• 7. Cruikshank provided the illustration "Major Ap Owen" to accompany Maxwell's text.