Letters of Charles Dickens: 1833-1870

This selection from the letters of Charles Dickens (1812-70) was edited (as it says on the title page) ‘by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter’. The former was Georgina Hogarth (1827-1917), who stayed in Dickens’ household and cared for the family when the author separated from his wife, her sister, in 1858; the latter was Mary (1838-96), known in the family as Mamie, his favourite child. They had published a three-volume edition in 1880, and a ‘New Edition’ in 1882; this reissue is of the single-volume third edition of 1893. The collection was seen as a ‘supplement’ to Forster’s life of Dickens (also reissued in this series). Inevitably, it focuses on the positive and dynamic sides of Dickens’ complex character, and gives a vivid portrait of a man juggling family life, writing, editing, travelling, amateur theatricals and public readings from his works with tremendous energy and verve.