Letter from Charles Dickens, Great Malvern, to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1851 March 21 : autograph manuscript signed.

Commenting on a letter from a former inmate of the Home who had emigrated, saying "It is most encouraging and delightful! Imagining backward to what these women were and might have been, and forward to what their children may be, it is impossible to estimate the amount of the good you are doing;" explaining the process by which Household Words is printed: "The difficulty is this. We don't keep sheets; the great point in such a work being only to print close to the number wanted - otherwise the profit would be all in stock - and one prefers money!! Consequently, as the numbers fall out of print, they are reprinted from stereotype plates. These plates, being exact copies in metal of the types as they stood in every page, cannot print one article and omit another, and yet have the appearance of going on consecutively. In leaping over intermediate matter, they will necessarily leave gaps - but I think we might manage to make your Elegant Extracts presentable in a sort of Scrap Book. At all events, if you will give me the list, I'll try. I don't know whether I make myself understood? I have a misgiving that all this looks horribly complicated."