Add MS 43689

LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS to his wife Catherine, née Hogarth; May 1835-5 Nov. 1867, n.d. Autograph. The series comprises 136 letters, of which the first sixty (mostly undated) were written before their marriage on 2 Apr. 1836, and the last four after their separation in 1858. Also included in the volume are: - (a) An explanatory foreword (undated, but presumably written in 1899, when the letters were presented to the Museum) by Mrs Kate Perugini, second daughter of Charles Dickens, to whom the letters had been given by her mother shortly before her death in 1879. f. 1; - (b) Copy, by Mrs Dickens, of a letter from Dickens to his solicitor, Frederick Ouvry; 5 Sept. 1858. ff. 296-297b; - (c) ''Prayer at Night'', written by Dickens for family use; n.d. Autograph. ff. 298-299. All the material is printed, with some variations in the order of the undated letters and with the texts of two further letters added from other sources, by Walter Dexter, Mr and Mrs Charles Dickens: His Letters to Her, 1935. The letters are also included in the Nonesuch edition of Dickens''s Works, 1937-1938. See also Brit. Mus. Quart., viii, 1933-1934, p. 137; xxiv, 1961-1962, p. 16. Portions of 22 letters had already been printed in The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Georgina Hogarth and Mary Dickens, 3 vols., 1880-1882. Paper; ff.iii+299. Folio. 1835-1867. Bound in at the front of the volume are: - (a) A note by Mrs Perugini relating to the reservation of the letters from public use until June 1925, f. 1; this reservation was subsequently extended to cover the lifetime of the last surviving child of Dickens, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, who died 21 Dec. 1933; - (b) A pencil sketch (f. ii) of Mrs Kate Perugini, drawn in 1925, and presented, in 1934, by Miss Mary Gladys Storey. Presented by Mrs Kate Perugini in 1899 and previously reserved. Copyright in the contents of this volume is vested in the Trustees of the British Museum, cf. Brit. Mus. Quart., loc. cit.