The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 16 JUNE 1857

Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2

Address: The Chevalier Bernhard Tauchnitz | Leipzig

OFFICE OF HOUSEHOLD WORDS | Tuesday Sixteenth June 1857

My Dear M. Tauchnitz

I beg to acknowledge with thanks, the safe receipt of your cheque for £60 sterling, in completion of the payment for Little Dorrit.3

I am happy to accept your offer of £60 sterling per annum for the permission to publish at Leipzig such of the Novels and Tales that appear in Household Words, as you shall think proper to select for that purpose.4 I understand, as you desire, that the general provisions of our former agreement will apply to this. There is no doubt that the number of Novels and Tales published in Household Words will be at least as great in the future as it has been in the past.

It caused me much disappointment to have missed seeing you when you were in London;5 I hope to be more fortunate next time.

Mrs Dickens6 and all my family beg to be kindly remembered to Madame Tauchnitz7 and all your family. Pray believe me

Very faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Baron Bernhard Christian Tauchnitz (1816-95), publisher, of Leipzig. Born at Schleinitz; nephew of the publisher Karl Tauchnitz. Founded his own firm in Leipzig in 1837. The firm began its “Collection of British Authors” Sep 1841 with Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham. Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and American Notes had appeared before the end of 1842, and Nicholas Nickleby in June 1843. He and CD became friendly, and CD sent Charley to Leipzig to learn German. According to John Forster, Tauchnitz always paid liberally. He wrote to Forster after CD’s death: “All Mr Dickens’s works have been published under agreement by me. My intercourse with him lasted nearly twenty-seven years. The first of his letters dates in October 1843, and his last at the close of March, 1870 [see To Tauchnitz, 31 March 1870]. Our long relations were not only never troubled by the least disagreement, but were the occasion of most hearty personal feeling; and I shall never lose the sense of his kind and friendly nature. On my asking him his terms for Edwin Drood, he replied, ‘Your terms shall be mine’” (John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J.W.T. Ley [London: Cecil Palmer, 1928], p. 807n).
• 2. Böhnke published his transcription, with brief annotation, in "The Correspondence between Charles Dickens and Bernhard Tauchnitz: General Observations and Newly Discovered Letters", Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013), p. 326.
• 3. Little Dorrit was published by Tauchnitz in both monthly numbers (1855-7) and, in the "Collection of British Authors" in four volumes (350, 360, 380, and 390, 1856-7).
• 4. Tauchnitz issued Novels and Tales Reprinted from Household Words, in the "Collection of British Authors" series, in 11 volumes from 1856 to 1859. These featured mainly works of fiction, but also historical articles and other accounts from the last 7 volumes of the periodical. See Anne Lohrli, Household Words: Table of Contents, List of Contributors and Their Contributions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), p. 48.
• 5. Untraced.
• 6. Catherine Dickens, née Hogarth (1815-79), CD's wife.
• 7. Henriette von Tauchnitz, née Morgenstern (1817-96).