DICKENS (CHARLES)

Autograph letter signed ("Charles Dickens") to Peter Bayne, 1860: 'AS MUCH WORK AS I CAN COPE WITH': DICKENS WRITING GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Footnotes

'FOR THE NEXT TWELVE MONTHS... AS MUCH WORK AS I CAN COPE WITH': DICKENS TAKEN UP WITH THE WRITING OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

At the time he received this letter Peter Bayne, a Scottish journalist and author, had just been appointed editor of The Dial, a new weekly newspaper planned for London, so it is likely that he had approached Dickens to become a contributor. The venture was not to be a success: 'Bayne not only struggled heroically to save the situation by editorial ability, but lost all his own property in the venture, and burdened himself with debts that crippled him for many years' (ODNB).

Dickens could rightly claim pressure of work as an excuse not to take on any more commitments. Since the autumn of 1860 he had been in the throes of writing Great Expectations, the first number appearing in All the Year Round on 1 December 1860. The weekly serial continued until August 1861 and was published in three volumes the following October. Earlier in the month he had undertaken a trip to Devon and Cornwall with Wilkie Collins, the result of which was the jointly-written short story set in Clovelly, A Message from the Sea, for the 1860 Christmas issue. Our letter is not published in the Pilgrim Edition of Charles Dickens' letters, neither is it published amongst the more recent letters online.

Provenance: Peter Bayne (1830-1896), and thence by descent.