Item Info

Accession Number: 86-2802
Physical Description: [3] pages
Transcription:

Gad's Hill Place

Higham by Rochester, Kent.

Saturday Eighteenth June 1859

My Dear Kolle

It is an extremely difficult thing, to pronounce on the qualifications of any writer--or anyone aspiring to be a writer--with only one youthful composition to guide the judgment. I have read  Joan of Arc attentively, and all I can do, is, to tell you faithfully what impression it has left upon me.

A facility of versification is certainly to be observed in it, though it has many very weak and lame lines. But it seems to me to stop at turning prose into rhyme--and I don't see much good in that. When I say this, I mean that I do not find the writer to see the story poetically, or to place any scene in it, vividly, through the aid of a bright and picturesque imagination, before the reader. After laying the piece down, I do not remember any thought in it, any fancy, any image, any little touch of description, that gives me the least notion connected with the story of which I was not already possessed. I do not believe that the way to success, recompense, or happiness in composition, lies through such a portal. And unless the writer can do much better, my advice to her, is, to leave it alone.

But she may be able to do better, and considered as an amateur, lady-composition this is very good. I understand you, however, to wish to know whether this [is] something beyond such a composition? I think not. 

In remembrance of the old days to which you so feelingly refer in your note and which are no less dear to me, do not hesitate to write to me again on this subject, if you should see reason for doing so. And pray assure your daughter that I am not a DRAGON. but that I tell her the truth, as her father's old friend should.

Faithfully Yours

Charles Dickens

Henry Kolle Esquire

MssDate: Saturday Eighteenth June 1859
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Recipient: Kolle, Henry William (?1808-1881)
Provenance: Sotheby Sale 23-24 June 75 lot 307 thru Maggs

Bibliography:

 The British Academy Pilgrim Edition: The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume Nine, 1859-1861. Graham Storey, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 79-80.

Country: Creation Place Note:Gad's Hill Place
Country:England
City/Town/Township:Higham by Rochester, Kent

Creation Year: 1859
Call Number: DL K833 1859-06-18
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author