The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD,1 20 SEPTEMBER 1861

Text from facsimile in Swann Auction Galleries online catalogue, Oct 2022.

OFFICE OF ALL THE YEAR ROUND,
Friday Twentieth September 1861

My Dear Mr Hollingshead.

    I think on the whole it will be best to reserve the wonderful characters for the Xmas No.2 But don't let this prevent from trying your hand at something else for the same No. if anything should occur to you.

        Faithfully Yours alwys

                CD

John Hollingshead Esquire

• 1. John Hollingshead (1827-1904; Dictionary of National Biography), son of an Irish barrister; journalist and, later, theatre manager. After working as a clerk and commercial traveller, became a prolific contributor to periodicals; wrote for Punch, the Leader, Cornhill, the Train, Household Words and All the Year Round, and many others. For a time dramatic critic on Daily News. Contributed regularly to Household Words from Oct 1857; became a member of the staff 1859, and found CD "an excellent editor to write under.... In business ... sympathetic, though not over liberal." In My Lifetime (2 vols, London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1895), vol. 1, pp. 98-101, he recalled his first dinner with CD at the HW Office, the others present being Wilkie Collins, Mark Lemon, W.H. Wills and Townshend (whom he wrongly describes as "the Hon."). He greatly admired CD: in My Lifetime he includes himself among the "Dickens young men" (vol. 1, p. 96) and refers to CD as "the master" (vol. 1, p. 97); but stresses that he did not imitate CD and that CD very rarely altered his articles (p. 96). Published many collections of his periodical contributions, presenting five of them (Odd Journeys In and Out of London [1860], Rubbing the Gilt Off [1860], Under Bow Bells [1860], Ways of Life [1861], and Underground London [1862]) to CD, inscribed "from his affectionate friend", or with similar inscriptions (see Catalogue of the Library of CD, ed. J. H. Stonehouse [London: Piccadilly Fountain Press, 1935], pp. 59-60). Worked for abolition of paper duty and reform of copyright law. Manager of Gaiety Theatre 1868-86; Director of several Music Hall companies.
• 2. Hollingshead did not contribute to the 1861 Christmas number of All the Year Round, which featured the story ‘Tom Tiddler’s Ground’.