Dickens, Charles

One page (7 x 4 3/8 in.; 179 x 113 mm) on a bifolium of blue paper, "Devonshire Terrace, 17 November 1842, to Edward Moxon; lightly creased, mounting remnants on verso.

Ogden Goelet (AAA-Anderson, 3 January 1935, lot 126; misidentifying the subject of the letter as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. House, et al., 3: 375 (original unlocated; partial text only from the 1935 auction catalogue); cf. Fernando Galván, ""Poe versus Dickens: An Ambiguous Relationship," in A Descent into Edgar Allan Poe and His Works: The Bicentennial, ed. Moreno & Aragón (Bern, 2010)

One page (7 x 4 3/8 in.; 179 x 113 mm) on a bifolium of blue paper, "Devonshire Terrace, 17 November 1842, to Edward Moxon; lightly creased, mounting remnants on verso.
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Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe' Tales.

Poe had long admired Dickens's work, and when the latter came to Philadelphia in March 1842, Poe wrote the visiting celebrity to ask for an interview, sending along copies of his Tales of the Grotesques and Arabesque and his favorable reviews of Barnaby Rudge (whose Grip the raven probably partially inspired Poe's most famous poem). Dickens responded favorably on 6 March, and they enjoyed two long meetings that month, discussing American poetry, international copyright, Dickens's possible contributions to Graham's Magazine, and, most important, Dickens's pledge to try to find a British publisher for Poe's Tales.

In the press of his travels and writing, Dickens evidently neglected to follow up on his promise, prompting Poe to send him a reminder letter. Some eight months after meeting with Poe, Dickens here sends a somewhat desperate note to Edward Moxon, asking him to consider publication of the Tales so that he can “get absolution for my conscience in this matter”:

"I will not apologize for troubling you with the enclosed; for I am only executing an American commission which I am bound to discharge, when I ask you if you are disposed to publish them, in a cheap form here?

"Pray write me such a reply as I can send to the author of the volumes; and so get absolution for my conscience in this matter."

Moxon's reply was not favorable, and ten days after this letter, Dickens wrote to Poe, apologizing for having taken so long with his mission and explaining that his efforts to find him an English publisher had been in vain.

While Dickens may have found Poe to be a bit of a nuisance, he never forgot the tragic, gifted American. More than a quarter of a century later—with Poe dead nearly twenty years—Dickens returned to America in 1868. While there, he sought out Poe's mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, in Baltimore and gave her a check for $150.