To MISS JULIA PARDOE,³ 19 JULY 1842

MS Harvard College Library.

• 1 Devonshire Terrace | York Gate Regents Park.
• Nineteenth July 1842.

Dear Madam.

I beg to set you right on one point, in reference to the American Robbers, which perhaps you do not quite understand.

The existing law allows them to reprint any English book, without any communication whatever—with the author, or anybody else. My books have all been reprinted on these agreeable terms.—But sometimes when expectation is awakened there, about a book, before its publication, one firm of Pirates will pay a trifle to procure early proofs of it,⁴ and get so much the start of the rest, as they can obtain by the time necessarily consumed in printing it. Directly it is printed, it is common property; and may be reprinted a thousand times.⁵

My circular only referred to such bargains as these.

I should add that I have no hope of the States doing Justice in this dishonest pg 275respect, and therefore do not expect to overtake these fellows—but we may cry "Stop Thief" nevertheless—especially as they wince and smart under it.

•                                              Faithfully Yours always
• Miss Pardoe.                                        Charles Dickens