The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THOMAS WATTS,1 3 DECEMBER 1849

Text from facsimile in University Archives online catalogue, Mar 2025.

Devonshire Terrace

Monday 3 December 1849.

Sir.
    I beg you to accept my best thanks for your very curious and interesting pamphlet. I was not aware of the discovery it describes, and indeed had never given any attention to the subject of which it treats. I had a general idea that the first Newspaper published in England, was published in the Armada Time; and looking into some books of reference within an hour or so of my going out to the News Vendors' dinner, and finding that idea confirmed, took its accuracy for granted, and thought no more about it.2 

    Yours faithfully and obliged

        CHARLES DICKENS

Thomas Watts Esquire.

• 1. Thomas Watts (1811-1869; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), librarian, From 1838 he was Assistant to Anthony Panizzi, Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, and helped to develop the new rules for the catalogue of printed books. His knowledge of almost every western European language qualified him to be the principal agent in selecting current foreign literature for deposit. In 1847 he introduced his “elastic system” of shelving books, which prevented the interruption of the numerical series when the growth of the collections required the transfer of books within the library. He estimated that between 1838 and 1857 he arranged at least 400,000 volumes on the shelves. Watts rose to become Assistant Keeper of Printed Books (1856), Superintendent of the Reading Room (1857) and finally Keeper of Printed Books (1866).
• 2. CD had delivered a speech on 21 November 1849, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary dinner of the Newsvendors’ Benevolent Association, in which he said, “It was no more than two hundred and fifty years since the first idea of a newspaper was conceived in this island, to stimulate the people to resist the Spanish Armada” (The Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. K.J. Fielding [Oxford: Clarendon, 1960], p. 102). This, however, was incorrect: the English Mercurie was initially believed to be a genuine record of the Spanish Armada battle; however, in 1839, Watts proved it was a forgery created by Philip Yorke, the 2nd Earl of Hardwicke (1720–90), as a literary game. The handwriting in the written copies of the "English Mercurie" matched that of Yorke. Watts published his findings as A Letter to Antonio Panizzi Esquire … on the Reputed Earliest Printed Newspaper, “The English Mercurie, 1588” (London: William Pickering, 1839). Watts had sent CD a copy of this pamphlet after reading the text of his speech in the press (see Speeches, p. 429).