The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JAMES BIRTLES,1 6 NOVEMBER 1865

MS David J. Holmes Autographs. Address: Mr. James Birtles | Mr. Whiting’s.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

Monday Sixth November 1865

Dr. Mr. Birtles

I will send you round the 2 concluding folios of the enclosed paper2 at about noon to day. Tomorrow morning I will begin to make up the Xmas No.3 and will enable you to go on breaking it into pages. 

Faithfully yrs

CD.

• 1. James Birtles, printer, on staff of Charles Whiting, printer of All the Year Round.
• 2. No doubt for All the Year Round, but not identified.
• 3. Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions, All the Year Round  Christmas No., published 7 Dec 65. Birtles had by now received the first three stories (To Birtles, 7 Nov, Pilgrim Letters 11). CD “made up” the No. with another five stories, including his own “To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt” and “To be Taken for Life”; he then spent 8 Nov with Birtles, “making up” the No. for printing, “always a tough job” (To Lehmann, 7 Nov, Pilgrim Letters 11). Speed was essential: galley proofs had to be read and corrected, the rest of the MS typeset and finally the type broken up into double-column pages. The No. was in print by 17 Nov, when CD sent Charles Kent a confidential copy.