- Brief description
- Letter from Charles Dickens to Leigh Hunt, 13 July 1838
- Label
- Dickens asks his friend, Leigh Hunt, for his opinion. Hunt was a prominent journalist known for his radical views. He was imprisoned for offending the Prince Regent in his paper, The Examiner. With the letter, Dickens sent a parcel to Hunt containing copies of the first volumes of Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist and a copy of an American version of The Pickwick Papers, of which Dickens complains about the ‘singular vileness of its illustrations’. In Hunt’s reply to this letter, he praises Dickens for his genius and admires his wit and humour.
- Collection
- Archives & Manuscripts
- Object number
- A353
- Object type
- letter
- Production person
- Dickens, Charles
- Production date
- 13/07/1838
- Inscription content
- 48 Doughty Street | Friday Evening
My Dear Sir
Here is the unhappy parcel which, after being safely booked and entered in my own mind as gone, has been lying on my table in the dust of fourteen days.
It contains the first four numbers of my new work, a portion of Oliver Twist (which you will find in the two Miscellany Volumes) and an American Edition of Pickwick, which is curious from the singular vileness of the Illustrations. Do me the favor to read Oliver and Nickleby first. Of the latter work I have directed the publishers to send you all future numbers regularly; and of the former I will send you more anon, if it interest you -- an old stager -- sufficiently.
You are an old stager in works, but a young one in faith -- faith in all beautiful and excellent things. If you can only find it in that green heart of yours to tell me one of these days that you have met, in wading through the accompanying trifles, with any thing that felt like a vibration of the old chord you have touched so often and sounded so well, you will confer the truest gratification on, My Dear Sir,
Your faithful friend
CHARLES DICKENS
Leigh Hunt Esquire
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