The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD,1 4 OCTOBER 1857 

Replaces extract in Pilgrim Letters 8, p. 460. 

Text from facsimile in University Archives online catalogue, June 2018.

Gad's Hill

Monday Fourth October 1857 

Dear Mr Hollingshead

            I don't think there is enough in this paper,2 to separate it from some other similar narratives (more or less), that have appeared in Household Words. Twenty Shillings in the pound, I with pleasure retain for insertion.3

                                                Faithfully Yours

                                                CHARLES DICKENS

John Hollingshead Esquire

• 1. John Hollingshead (1827-1904; Dictionary of National Biography), 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 the Daily News. Contributed regularly to Household Words from Oct 1857; became a member of the journal's staff 1859. He greatly admired CD: in My Lifetime (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1895) he includes himself among the "Dickens young men" (I, 96) and refers to CD as "the master" (I, 97); but stresses that he did not imitate CD and that CD very rarely altered his articles (I, 96). Hollingshead later became manager of the Gaiety Theatre 1868-86, and Director of several Music Hall companies; he is credited with bringing Gilbert and Sullivan together for the first time in 1871.
• 2. Unidentified; Hollingshead contributed numerous pieces to Household Words from October 1857 onward.
• 3. "Twenty Shillings in the Pound", which described dishonest business practices, was published in Household Words 16 (7 Nov 1857): 444-6. See also To John Hollingshead, 24 Sep 1857.