Item Info

Accession Number: 87-1694
Physical Description: [2] pages
Material: paper
Transcription:

 My Dear Kent
          Starting off for a long country walk, after very hard work, I put this in my pocket to post at some airy receiving-house on the road. I address it to your office; not being quite sure that I correctly remember your private address.
          I received your book with the greatest pleasure, and heartily thank you for it. It is a volume of a highly prepossessing appearance and a most friendly look. I felt as if I should have taken to it at sight; even (a very large even) though I had known nothing of its contents, or of its author!
         For the last week I have been most perseveringly and ding-dong doggedly at work, making headway but slowly. The spring always has a restless influence over me; and I weary, at any season, of this London dining out, beyond expression; and I yearn for the country again. This is my excuse for not having written to you sooner. Besides which, I had a baseless conviction that I should see you at the office last Thursday. Not having done so, I fear you must be worse, or no better? If you can let me have a report of yourself, pray do. I hope all is ready for the second of May, and that London will burst on the first into an eruption of posters. You could not have begun at a better time, I trust.
                                                    Believe me Ever
                                                 affectionately yours
                                                             Charles Dickens
Charles Kent Esquire

MssDate: Monday Morning Twenty Fifth April, 1870
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Notes:

The book Dickens refers to is Poems. A new edition, 1870 (including some poems published in his first collection, Aletheia, 1850)
The reference to the "second of May" is to the publication day of Kent's Poems. 

Recipient: Kent, Charles, 1823-1902
Provenance: Hamill & Barker 5/1955, Matlack.

Bibliography:

Volume 12, pp. 512-513, The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Madeline House & Graham Storey; associate editors, W.J. Carlton…[et al.] 

Country: Country:England
City/Town/Township:[London]

Call Number: DL K419 1870-04-25
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author