The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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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.

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Period:

1861-1870

Theme(s):

exhibitions

To HENRY COLE,1 [3 MAY 1866]

Envelope only.
Text from facsimile in Chiswick Auctions online catalogue, July 2022.

1. Henry Cole (1808-82; Dictionary of National Biography), civil servant; assistant keeper at the Record Office and advocate of postal reform, but chiefly noted for a series of illustrated children's stories, "Felix Summerly's Home Treasury", and for his interest in the Society of Arts. Awarded prize by Society of Arts for design of tea service, 1845; began organization for producing Summerly's Art Manufactures. His interest in organizing exhibitions of art manufactures led directly to the Great Exhibition of 1851. His relations with CD were friendly: CD joined the Society of Arts in 1849; he was also adopted as a member of the Committee on Inventions in 1850, and helped it by publicity in "A Poor Man's Tale of a Patent" (Household Words 2 [19 Oct 1850]: 73-5). At Cole's instigation CD was made a member of the ineffective Working Class Committee in connection with the Great Exhibition. The disagreement between CD and Cole about industrial design inspired the novelist’s satiric allusions in Hard Times, chapter 2.
2. The ditto marks were a shorthand occasionally used by CD to indicate the address as it would appear on the envelope. See To Richard Monckton Milnes, [1840-41].
3. Cole was Secretary to the Royal Commission for the Paris Exhibition, which selected works to send to the Exposition Universelle de 1867 à Paris, which ran from 1 April to 31 October 1867. CD was invited to become a member of the committee for promoting the study of the Paris Exhibition by UK artisans; these workmen were to attend the Exhibition, as well as visit French factories and workshops and make reports. 80 artisans were selected, and their reports were published by the Society of Arts in 1867. See Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 295. The Paris Exhibition included three British members on the 60-strong Commission; see Jonathan Meyer, Great Exhibitions: London, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, 1851-1900 (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club, 2006).