Brief description: Draft letter, from Charles Dickens to Anne Brown, May 1858
Label: Written on his personal paper headed with his Tavistock House address, this draft letter was for the family servant, Anne Brown. It contains the first paragraphs of the infamous “Violated Letter” in which Dickens publicly wrote about the collapse of his marriage to Catherine. He mentions Anne in the letter as a friend and witness to the marriage’s breakdown. Dickens repeats the line mentioning Anne on the back of the letter.
Collection: Archives & Manuscripts
Object number: A840
Object type: letter
Production person: Dickens, Charles
Production date: May 1858
Inscription content: Mrs Dickens and I have lived unhappily together for many years. Hardly any one who has known us intimately can fail to have known that we are in all aspects of character and temperament wonderfully unsuited to each other. I suppose that no two people, not vicious in themselves, ever were joined together, who had a [indecipherable] difficulty in understanding one another, or who had less in common.

An attached woman – more a friend of both of us than a servant – who lived with us 16 years, and is now married, and who was, and still is, in Mrs Dickens’s confidence and in mine, has had the closest familiar experience of this unhappiness – in London – in the country – in France – in Italy – wherever we have been – year after year, month after month, week after week, day after day.

Draft letter from Charles Dickens to Anne Brown, May 1858