The British Academy/The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens: Volume 10: 1862-1864
Charles Dickens author Margaret Brown editor Graham Storey editor Kathleen Tillotson editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:30th Apr '98
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This volume presents 918 letters, 435 previously unpublished, for the years 1862 to 1864. Our Mutual Friend, Dickens's main work in the period, comes out monthly from 30 April 1864 to 31 October 1865, illustrated by Marcus Stone, son of Dickens's old friend, the painter Frank Stone; a series of new letters to him shows the immense care Dickens took over his illustrations. The three All the Year Round Christmas numbers, "Somebody's Luggage", "Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings" and "Mrs. irriper's Legacy", take up much of his energies and are highly successful. Public readings do not occupy so much of his time as in the last volume; but he completes his second provincial tour in January 1862; gives two series weekly in London; and reads for charity in both Rochester and Paris. He declines an offer of £10,000 for an eight months' reading tour in Australia. Gad's Hill plays an increasingly major part in his life: he entertains many of his friends there and makes constant improvements to it. But there is no other period in which he pays so many visits to France, generally alone. The deliberately mystifying language he uses about these visits suggests he was seeing Ellen Ternan either in Paris or Boulogne or both, but there is no evidence to prove it. Long letters to his Swiss friend, W. W. F. de Cerjat, testify to his concern with public issues; several show how much he hated the American Civil War.
Enshrined within its boards, accurately edited, annotated to the full, are small missives to his friends and family, curt business letters .. The impressive variety of these epistles is matched by the range of sources from which the editors have garnered them. * Matthew Reynolds, The Times Literary Supplement *
`Each volume of this edition wins acclaim as it appears, and it is right that it should do so. Kathleen Tillotson, Graham Storey and their team are deserving of every word of praise accorded to them for their meticulous and wide-ranging research.' Claire Tomalin, Times Literary Supplement
`The dynamism the letters convey is breathtaking . . . Like its predecessors, this new volume of the Pilgrim edition is a model of imaginative scholarship. . . . The magnificent footnotes (an absorbing read, even without the letters) unroll the whole cavalcade of contemporary life...' John Carey, Sunday Times
`The editing of the volume is as scrupulous and informative as readers of the Pilgrim Edition have by now come to expect. Many quiet triumphs of detection are recorded in the footnotes.' Dan Jacobson, Sunday Telegraph
collated and meticulously researched by Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson * Dalya Alberge. The Times *
we are faced with a figure who challenges us in a different way from the probing, sparkling, illuminating actor and observer of the 1840s and 1850s. This appears more clearly because of the Pilgrim's editing, its continued reliability and restraint and balanced judgement, and its attention to the general scene. As conceived and carried through, this is a superlative work on a grand scale. The editing is challenging in its restraint. It gives the evidence, and leaves conclusions to be drawn by readers ... there is a great deal in the ongoing Letters which is illuminating, that may prevent oversights about Dickens and his writing, and that is even essential to a full understanding. * K J Fielding, YES, 30, 2000 *
ISBN: 9780198122944
Dimensions: 240mm x 162mm x 34mm
Weight: 925g
536 pages