The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To HENRY SPICER,1 [24 APRIL 1860]

Envelope only.
Text from facsimile on eBay, July 2020.

Address: Henry Spicer Esquire | 9 York Street | Portman Square | W.
Date: PM 24 Apr 1860, London W.C.

• 1. William Henry Spicer (1812-91), dramatist, poet and miscellaneous writer; son of Capt. (later Col.) W.H. Spicer, of the Mansion, Leatherhead, Surrey. Four of his plays performed in London 1845-8, two at the Olympic, which he owned 1847-9; published Night Voices and Other Poems, 1844; Old Styles's, an 1859 novel, which was dedicated to CD "with the regard and gratitude of the author"; and three collections of spiritualist experiences: Facts and Fantasies, 1853; Sights and Sounds ... an entire History of the American "Spirit" Manifestations, 1853; and Strange Things Among Us, 1863 (copy at Gad's Hill inscribed "with best Compliments": Catalogue of the Library of CD, ed. J. H. Stonehouse [London: Piccadilly Fountain Press, 1935], p. 104). Contributed over 50 pieces to All the Year Round, including four eye-witness accounts of Garibaldi's campaign 1859-60; "A White Hand and a Black Thumb", in six instalments, from 2 Jan 1864; and a contribution to "Mrs Lirriper's Legacy", All the Year Round Christmas Number, 1864 (for a full list, mostly previously unidentified, see Kathleen Tillotson, Appx to "Henry Spicer, Forster, and Dickens", Dickensian 74 [1988]: 77-8, the majority collected in his Bound to Please [2 vols, 1867]). For his career as a dramatist, quarrel in the 1840s with Forster, and long friendship with CD, see Tillotson, pp. 67-77. On Spicer as a writer on spiritualism, see Kathleen Tillotson, "Bleak House at a Séance", Dickensian 84 (1988): 3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in the same context, referred to him as "the famous Mr. Spicer" (Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letters to her Sister, 1846-1859, ed. Leonard Huxley [London: John Murray, 1929], p. 193).