The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To HENRY BURNETT,1 [1850-2]

Envelope only.

Text from facsimile on eBay, Nov 2021.

Address: Henry Burnett Esquire | 90 Upper Brook Street | Manchester
Date: Handwriting and signature confirm 1850-2. Burnett moved from 90 Upper Brook Street to 98 Brook Street in late 1852 or early 1853.

• 1. Henry Burnett (1811-93), singer, music teacher; husband of CD’s sister Fanny (1810-48), whom he met when both were students at the Royal Academy of Music. Their sickly child Henry Jr (d. 1849) was the inspiration for Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol and Paul Dombey in Dombey and Son. Burnett played Squire Norton in CD’s comic operetta The Village Coquettes, and was a member of William Charles Macready’s theatrical company at Covent Garden. He worked as a Professor of Music after moving to Manchester in the early 1840s. Burnett was a prolific author of reminiscences of CD, published after the author’s death; see, for example, “Mr. Henry Burnett’s Reminiscences”, in Frederic G. Kitton, Dickens by Pen and Pencil (London: Frank T. Sabin, 1890), pp. 136-9.