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Charles Dickens

Madeline House, Graham Storey, and Kathleen Mary Tillotson (eds), The British Academy/The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 3: 1842–1843

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To Lady Holland, [27] JULY 1842*

MS The Earl of Ilchester. Date: 26 July 42 was Tuesday; doubtless CD was writing on the 27th. This misdating raises the possibility that last six letters, all dated 26 July 42 but without day of the week, were also written on the 27th.

Devonshire Terrace. | Wednesday Twenty Sixth July | 1842.

Dear Lady Holland

Pray do not suppose that I have ever forgotten my pledge4 to send you the pg 290inclosed books.1 The truth is that I found my own first copy so blotted and defaced by scoring and underlining, that you would have found it quite a Nuisance. I therefore sent for another; and did not get it until yesterday.

You must not suppose, either, that I have marked in the index to each volume the only pieces I think worth reading. On the contrary I really believe them to be nearly all equally good. I can only say of those I have marked, that they are good things to begin with.2

  •                                    Always Dear Lady Holland
  •                                              Yours faithfully and obliged
  • The Lady Holland                                   Charles Dickens

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Notes

Editor’s Note
4 Perhaps made during his call of 14 July (To Lady Holland, 11 July and fn).
Editor’s Note
1 Probably Longfellow's first two books of poems, Voices of the Night, 1839, and Ballads and Other Poems, late 1841. Samuel Longfellow described CD as leaving his brother's breakfast party on 4 Feb "in a carriage with … Sumner, an umbrella, a bear skin coat, & two octavo volumes of Longfellow's poems" (quoted by Edward Wagenknecht, "Dickens in Longfellow's Letters and Journals", D, lii [1955]. 9).
Editor’s Note
2 Voices of the Night includes "A Psalm of Life" ("Tell me not, in mournful numbers …"); Ballads and Other Poems, "The Wreck of the Hesperus", "The Village Blacksmith" and "Excelsior".
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