Book Description

Excerpt from Charles Dickens' Original Autograph Copy of His Letter to Henry Colburn Upon the Controversy Occasioned by the Contribution of Walter Savage Landor to Pic Nic Papers: Together With a Note to Forster on the Subject, April 1st, 1841 Here by happy chance is the very letter Dickens refers to, or at least an authentic copy of it in his own hand, with a delightful postscript about the sneaking vagabond! To a man of Dickens' sensitive temperament the cool way in which the publisher thus trespassed on the Editor's privi leges was enough to anger him to breaking point, but our Author had still further cause of complaint against Colburn - for trade purposes the latter con sidered the work should run to three volumes, so he calmly annexed an American book called Charcoal Sketches, by J. C. Neal of Phila delphia, which he added to the Pic Nic Papers without a word of acknowledgement as to its source, thus casting a serious slur on Dickens; as late as 1870 the latter was charged by Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie in his Life of Dickens with having helped himself to Neal's sketches when his supply of matter ran short, but the statement is effectually disposed of in a letter from Dickens tohis friend Edmund Yates in 1859, where he em phatically says of that volume I didn't know and don't know anything. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.