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, 1852 December 23 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
421361
Accession number
MA 1352.306
Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870.
Display Date
London, England, 1852 December 23.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 18.1 x 11.3 cm
Notes
Signed with initials.
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.
Written from "Tavistock House / Twenty Third December 1852."
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
Relating the experience of his portrait sittings with a photographer, John E. Mayall; saying "I am happy to say that the little piece of business between the Sun and myself, came off with the greatest success [...] The Artist who operated, is quite a Genius in that way, and has acquired a large stock of a very singular knowledge of all the little eccentricities of the light and the instrument. The consequence of which, is, that his results are very different from those of other men. I am disposed to think the portrait, by far the best specimen of anything in that way, I have ever seen. Some of the peculiarities inseparable from the process - as a slight rigidity and desperate grimness - are in it, but very greatly modified. I sat five times. It is not come home yet, as it is waiting for a case; but I hope you will be pleased with it. I shall have a request to make to you when you come back to town again, if you think well of the picture, which I hope and trust you will not refuse;" mentioning his Household Words responsibilities.