Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from Charles Dickens, London, to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1853 January 7 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
419847
Accession number
MA 1352.309
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1853 January 7.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (5 pages) ; 20.2 x 12.5 cm + envelope
Notes
Written on the stationery of the Office of Household Words.
Signed with initials.
Envelope addressed to: "Miss Burdett Coutts / Mivart's Hotel / Brook Street."
The letter is part of a collection, MA 1352, which consists of letters from Charles Dickens to the Baroness, to her companion Hannah (Meredith) Brown, or the latter's husband, William Brown; with 70 letters written by others to Miss Coutts or to Dickens in his capacity as her unofficial almoner; and a few others. See the collection-level record for more information.
Provenance
The letters formed part of the Burdett-Coutts sale (Sotheby, 17 May 1922); they were purchased for Oliver W. Barrett in whose collection they remained until it was sold by his son (Parke-Bernet, 31 October 1951).
Summary
Describing in detail a visit to Saint Mark's District; saying that he does not think it is a suitable area for experiments with model dwellings; offering to show it to her or to meet with the Incumbent (the Reverend George Fitzgerald Galaher); mentioning that a ditch in Jacob's Island (scene of Chapter 50 in Oliver Twist) has been filled in; discussing the payment of his son Charles's tuition; describing an evening hosted by the Society of Artists in Birmingham, during which he was fêted and presented with a salver and diamond ring; saying that he promised to return to Birmingham at the end of the year and give a public reading of A Christmas Carol in the town hall; telling her that he asked the mayor about a certain church experiment, which turned out to have failed, but he did not have the opportunity to discuss it with Archdeacon Sandford; sending his best regards to Hannah Brown.