Dickens: Letters Pilgrim Edition – serie

The widely acclaimed Pilgrim edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens has contributed vastly to our knowledge of Dickens's life, personality, friendships, and preoccupations. The complete 12-volume set is now available at a specially reduced price.

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Fiction / Classics;

This ninth volume presents about 1,100 letters, many unpublished, from the years 1859 to 1861. It records Dickens's writing of two major novels, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, both published weekly in All the Year Round: the letters give an unusual insight into the inspiration for both. It also shows him planning planning and writing a substantial amount of the three Christmas numbers of this period, `A Haunted House', `A Message from the Sea', and `Tom Tiddler's Ground'. He expends great energy in establishing All the Year Round, to succeed Household Words, and during 1860 writes the first fourteen of his Uncommercial Traveller series. During these three years he gives two provincial tours of readings, in addition to readings in London. He spends a considerable part of his time at Gad's Hill, relying on his daughter Mamie and sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth to act as hostesses; the All the Year Round office becomes his London base. Ellen Ternan continues to act, though with diminishing success; in January 1859 Dickens almost certainly buys a long lease of 2 Houghton Place, Ampthill Square, for the Ternan family.

This volume presents 918 letters, 435 previously unpublished, for the years 1862 to 1864.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.

This eleventh volume presents 1158 letters, many previously unpublished or published only in part, for the years 1865 to 1867. Dickens's main work in the period is the completion of the monthly parts of Our Mutual Friend (final part 31 October 1865, for November); unusually, it comes out in two volumes (January and November 1865) during the period of its run. The three All the Year Round Christmas numbers, `Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions', `Mugby Junction', and `No Thoroughfare' (written jointly with Wilkie Collins) are again highly successful. He remains in high demand as chairman of a varied collection of public charitable dinners: they include charities to which he was constantly faithful, such as the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution and the Royal General Theatrical Fund; but he also presides, for the only time, at the Annual Dinner of the Dramatic, Equestrian, and Musical Sick Fund Association (14 February 1866) and - at the instigation of Charley Dickens, a keen oarsman and Committee member - at the Dinner of the Metropolitan Rowing Club (7 May 1866), making a particularly brilliant speech. The first reference to his swollen left foot, attributed by him to frost-bite, comes in February 1865; but the most dramatic event in this volume is the railway accident at Staplehurst, Kent, on 9 June 1865, in which he is involved on returning from a short visit to France, accompanied by Ellen Ternan and her mother. The frontispiece shows him helping the injured and dying. He gives two provincial reading tours managed by George Dolby of Chappell & Co., in 1866 and 1867, besides frequent readings in London. After a Farewell Dinner to him in London, with Lord Lytton in the Chair, he sails on 9 November 1867 from Liverpool to Boston, to begin his American tour of 75 readings.

The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens Volume 3. 1842-1843

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Fiction / Classics;

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Fiction / Classics;

This volume presents 1,592 letters, 668 of them previously unpublished, for the years 1850 to 1852. This was a time of great activity for Dickens, who completed the serial publication of David Copperfield, began work on Bleak House, successfully established the weekly Household Words (in which his own serial A Child's History of England appeared), and wrote about 100 articles and stories for the journal, including many uncollected pieces. In April 1851 he and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton founded the Guild of Literature and Art, a scheme to help writers and artists. He also suffered a number of personal blows: the deaths of his father, his baby daughter Dora, and two of his close friends, Richard Watson and Alfred D'Orsay; there was also anxiety over the illness of his wife Catherine.

This volume presents 1,251 letters, 447 previously unpublished, for the years 1853 to 1855; it also includes, as a substantial Appendix of Addenda, over 280 letters of the years 1831 to 1852 which came to light too late for earlier volumes. The period is one of activity remarkable even for Dickens. Besides the continuous editing of Household Words (where his Hard Times appears as a weekly serial), he is still at work on Bleak House until August 1853 and in 1855 is writing the early numbers of Little Dorrit. He manages and acts in children's plays in his little Tavistock House theatre on Twelfth Night, and later takes the leading part in Wilkie Collins's drama The Lighthouse with great effect. Work with Miss Coutts and the troublesome inmates of her `Home' increases, and readings for charity have begun. The Crimean war and the government's mismanagement receive much comment in letters and satirical articles, and lead to one exceptional venture into political life with a speech for the Administrative Reform Association. But his long and happy periods of residence in France with his family encourage a more detached view, and he also revisits Switzerland and Italy on a two-month tour with Collins and the painter Augustus Egg. Friends and family still dominate his personal life, but for a few weeks long-past emotions are revived when he hears from his old love Maria Beadnell, now a middle-aged Mrs Winter.

This eighth volume presents about 1,500 letters many of them unpublished, from the years 1856 to 1858. This period includes several major changes in Dickens's public and private life, notably in 1858 when he separates from his wife and starts a new career of paid readings from his works. But throughout 1856 and part of 1857, his main preoccupation is the writing of his monthly serial Little Dorrit; for much of 1856 he continues to reside happily in France with his family, both in Boulogne and Paris, giving racy accounts of its theatres and his meetings with writers and artists. At his own amateur theatricals in 1857, his great success in Wilkie Collins's The Frozen Deep has lasting consequences; at the close of his work for the Douglas Jerrold Fund, the play is repeated with professional actresses, including three members of the Ternan family. Later rumours of his relations with a young actress (Ellen Ternan) provoke him to an ill-advised public statement which leads to a breach with his publishers and with one of his closest friends, Mark lemon. Finally, he embarks on the first of many strenuous reading tours, giving 85 readings in over 40 towns, all within three months. His usual activities are not neglected: he makes many speeches for good causes, and continues to edit Household Words (and its successor All the Year Round), with help from his friend and assistant editor Wills. Throughout, there is new material, both in the letters and in the editors' annotation, with some fresh interpretation of controversial matters.