The Charles Dickens Letters Project
To JOHN SCOTT RUSSELL,1 1 JANUARY [1846]
Text from facsimile in Stargardt Autographenhandlung online catalogue, Mar 2025 Body of letter in the hand of W.H. Wills; closing and signature only in CD’s hand.
Date: Wills wrote “1845”, but must have forgotten the turn of the year; first correspondence on newspaper letterhead dated Dec 1845 (Pilgrim Letters 4, p.447).
OFFICE OF THE DAILY NEWS2
90, Fleet Street, and Whitefriars.3 1 January 1845
Dear Sir
I beg to say in reply to your letter received yesterday, that I am happy to conclude the arrangement on the altered terms you suggest.
In response to the manner of paying your salary I would observe that it is not within my province, and that Messrs Bradbury & Evans4 will be happy to arrange that part of the subject with you, at your earliest convenience.
I remain Dear Sir
Faithfully Yours
CHARLES DICKENS
J. Scott Russell Esquire
- 1. John Scott Russell (1808-82; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), civil engineer and shipbuilder. Railway editor on The Daily News under CD. Secretary of Society of Arts 1845–50; joint Secretary of Royal Commission for the 1851 Great Exhibition. FRS 1847. Published several books on shipbuilding and naval architecture.
- 2. D undertook editorship of The Daily News on 3 Nov 1845.
- 3. The dual address reflects the fact that a new office for The Daily News was being built at Dunstan House, 67 Fleet Street, on the corner of Whitefriars. See Bren Calver, “Charles Dickens at Dunstan House: A Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Building ‘Modernisation’”, Dickensian 121 (2025): 43.
- 4. Printers and publishers; CD’s publishers since transferring from Chapman & Hall in 1844. Publishers of The Daily News.