The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To WILLIAM ORR,1 24 JUNE 1866

Replaces mention in Pilgrim Letters 11, p. 216; text from facsimile in Swann Auction Galleries online catalogue, Feb 2018.

GAD’S HILL PLACE,
HIGHAM, BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
Sunday Twenty Fourth June 1866

Dear Sir

    Pray excuse my not having sooner acknowledged the receipt of your obliging letter, written in Mr F Chapman’s absence.2 I have been away on some holiday excursions. If I had known the registration to have been imperfect, I should certainly have wished it set right.3 But the liberty being taken, and not in this instance being very momentous, I do not think it worth while to make ineffectual resistance.

        Faithfully Yours

        CHARLES DICKENS

William Orr Esquire

• 1. William Somerville Orr (1799-1873), employee of Chapman and Hall, CD’s publishers. Previously a publisher at 2 Amen Corner, St Paul's Churchyard, 1837-59; published Orr's Circle of the Sciences (9 vols, 1854-6).
• 2. Frederic (or Frederick) Chapman (1823-95), publisher of CD’s works. He became a partner of Chapman and Hall in 1847, and took over the firm when his cousin Edward Chapman (1804-80) retired in 1864. From 1865 he also published the Fortnightly Review.
• 3. The Copyright Act of 1842 required registration of a book at Stationers' Hall, before an action could be brought to protect an author’s rights, for example in a case of suspected piracy; without that need, registration was optional. The Act also replaced compulsory registration of all books at Stationers’ Hall with compulsory delivery to the British Museum (now the British Library) of every book seeking copyright protection. For the registration of Pickwick Papers in 1861 see Pilgrim Letters 9, p. 441. CD and Chapman and Hall were joint proprietors of the copyright of the author’s works.