The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MESSRS CURRY & CO.,1 3 AUGUST 1842

Text from facsimile in Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books and Manuscripts online catalogue, March 2023.

Broadstairs, Kent.
Wednesday Third August.
1842.

Gentlemen.

    I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and of the newspaper which accompanied it.2 Let me thank you for making me acquainted with a new and very important demonstration on the part of these wholesale Robbers.3

    A Deputation waits upon the Board of Trade today, with certain statements and a Memorial on this very subject.4 As I have been travelling for the last two days,5 I did not receive my Invitation to attend until my arrival here, last night, when it was too late for me to reach town in time.6 But I immediately despatched your communication to Mr Murray,7 who is one of the body; and drew his attention to it, most particularly8

        Faithfully Yours

            CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Curry & Co., booksellers and publishers, of 9 Upper Sackville Street, Dublin.
• 2. This was probably an issue of one of two newspapers that made large profits from literary piracy: either Brother Jonathan (a weekly publication operated by Benjamin Day from 1842 to 1862, and was the first weekly illustrated publication in the United States) or The New World (a weekly New York paper, published from 26 Oct 1839 to May 1845 by Jonas Winchester); it had probably come from America on the Caledonia, which arrived on 29 July. On 7 July CD had issued a printed circular to such friends as Lady Blessington, Fanny Kemble, Richard Monckton Milnes, John Murray, and William Makepeace Thackeray, in which he harshly criticised these pirates: “The persons who exert themselves to mislead the American public on this question; to put down its discussion; and to suppress and distort the truth, in reference to it, in every possible way; are (as you may easily suppose) those who have a strong interest in the existing system of piracy and plunder; inasmuch as, so long as it continues, they can gain a very comfortable living out of the brains of other men, while they would find it very difficult to earn bread by the exercise of their own. These are the editors and proprietors of newspapers almost exclusively devoted to the republication of popular English works. They are, for the most part, men of very low attainments and of more than indifferent reputation; and I have frequently seen them, in the same sheet in which they boast of the rapid sale of many thousand copies of an English reprint, coarsely and insolently attacking the author of that very book, and heaping scurrility and slander upon his head. I would therefore entreat you, in the name of the honourable pursuit with which you are so intimately connected, never to hold correspondence with any of these men, and never to negociate with them for the sale of early proofs of any work over which you have control; but to treat, on all occasions, with some respectable American publishing house, and with such an establishment only” (Pilgrim Letters 3, pp. 258-9).
• 3. Curry & Co. would have had strong reasons for complaining to CD about copyright violations. In 1840–41 the firm had published Charles Lever’s Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon in 22 monthly parts in the Dublin University Magazine (under the author’s pseudonym “Harry Lorrequer”); the novel featured illustrations by CD’s frequent collaborator Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). It was published in two volumes in 1841. Meanwhile Carey & Hart of Philadelphia (a firm notorious for its pirating of CD’s works) released their own — unauthorised — 1-volume edition very quickly, in 1841. In the American press advertisements for multiple editions — both authorised and pirated — appeared on the same page: for example, The Philadelphia Inquirer of 17 December 1841 advertised the $1.25 British edition, and also announced competing editions published by Carey & Hart and E. Littell & Co. (p. 3). Considering that CD was highly involved in leading the charge against American pirating of British novels, was working with Phiz, and was victimised by Carey & Hart and other American publishers, it is no wonder that Curry & Co. reached out to the author with an account of these misdeeds.
• 4. William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98) was at the time President of the Board of Trade, responsible for the implementation of the recently-passed Copyright Amendment Act (1 July 1842, revised by the Customs and Excise Act of 9 July) which prohibited the importation of pirated works into the Colonies and authorized their seizure. Canada and the West Indies in particular found loopholes in the drafting, and constantly evaded the law. See To C.C. Felton and To W.H. Prescott, 31 July 1842 in Pilgrim Letters 3, pp. 291–3, 294–296.
• 5. CD and his family travelled to Broadstairs on 1 Aug; see To Felton in Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 292.
• 6. In CD’s letter to John Murray of 2 August 1842, he deeply regretted not being able to join the deputation: “if I had been fortunate enough to have seen you on Sunday, or to have received your note two hours earlier, I would have sacrificed any consideration of convenience or personal comfort, for the lightest feather of a cause in which I have taken, and shall ever take, such an earnest interest” (Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 300).
• 7. John Murray III (1808-92; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), publisher; eldest son of John Murray II, whom he succeeded as head of the firm in 1843. The Murray publishing dynasty became famous for publishing the works of Byron, the Quarterly Review, and Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
• 8. CD sent Murray the letter and newspaper he had received from Curry & Co., of which he observed, “They shew what the scoundrels are doing; and point out a new feature in their frauds which I think is most important [underlined four times]” (Pilgrim Letters 3, pp. 300–01).