The Charles Dickens Letters Project

Advanced Search

Theme

Correspondent

How to cite:

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].

Database:

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

Find us on social media:

Period:

1836-1840

Theme(s):

Pic Nic Papers

editing

travel

To HENRY COLBURN,1 30 MAY 1840

Facsimile in Sotheby’s online catalogue, July 2014.

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE

May 30th 1840

Dear Sir

What do you wish me to do with the tale2 which you left here t'other day? As it was left without any note or explanation, I am quite at sea about it.

I am going to Broadstairs for a month, early on Monday Morning. If you wish to communicate with me on the subject, a letter addressed to me there, will find me readily.

Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS

Henry Colburn Esquire

1. Henry Colburn (d.1855), publisher and magazine proprietor. Founded the New Monthly Magazine (1814), Literary Gazette (1817), Court Journal (1829), and held interests in the Athenaeum and Sunday Times. Brought out the first editions of Evelyn's Diary 1819 and Pepys's Diary 1825. Disraeli, Bulwer, Hook, Marryat, Ainsworth and Lady Morgan were among the authors he published. Had a highly unsatisfactory partnership with Richard Bentley 1829-32. His opportunism earned him many enemies, Fraser's Magazine describing him as the 'Prince Paramount of Puffers and Quacks' (I [1830], 320). Published The Pic Nic Papers, edited by CD, 1841. His widow, Eliza Ann, married John Forster in 1856.
2. Unidentified; possibly a contribution for CD to consider for inclusion in The Pic Nic Papers, contracted for publication by Colburn in 1838 but not published until 1841.