The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

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Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

Theme(s):

public readings

public recognition

celebrity

To ROBERT DRAKE,1 21 JANUARY 1858

MS Huntington Library.

Tavistock House, London, W.C. | Twenty First January 1858

Dear Sir

I find your note on returning from Bristol2 after two or three days absence. If you will send the sheet to me here, I will sign it and lose no time in returning it. I don’t very clearly see what the Chatham Mechanics’ Institution has to do with the matter of the Princess Royal’s marriage;3 but the Society of Arts4 is so very learned in all manner of approaches to her august father,5 that I have no doubt it is master of the subject.

Robert Drake Esquire.

Dear Sir | Faithfully Yours

CHARLES DICKENS

1. Robert Drake, of the Chatham and Rochester Mechanics’ Institution; CD was the President.
2. Where CD read, 19 Jan.
3. Princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise (1840-1901; Dictionary of National Biography), the Princess Royal, eldest child of Queen Victoria, married (25 Jan 58) Prince Frederick William of Prussia. Princess Victoria was later crown princess (1861) and Empress of Germany during Frederick’s brief reign (Mar-June 1888).
4. The Society’s full title was The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Princess Victoria in Germany encouraged the industrial arts and established the Berlin Industrial Art Museum, 1881.
5. Prince Albert.