The Letters of Charles Dickens, The Pilgrim Edition - Volume Five 1847-1849

Oxford: The Clarendon Press/ Oxford University Press, 1989. This volume presents 1,248 letters, 480 of them previously unpublished, for the years 1847 to 1849. They are years of success and stability. Dickens completes the serial publication of Dombey and Son in April 1848 and begins David Copperfield in May 1849. Other publications are his fifth and last Christmas book, The Haunted Man, and numerous articles for the Examiner. In March 1847 the first number of the Cheap Edition of his works is published; and by the autumn of 1849 plans for his weekly journal, Household Words, are well advanced. Amateur theatricals and the planning of Miss Coutts's Home for Homeless Women' (Urania Cottage), take up his remaining energies. Holidays are spent at Broadstairs and in the Isle of Wight. The volume includes his letters to Forster about making use of his autobiography' in David Copperfield. Appendixes include an unpublished draft prospectus, prepared by Dickens, for a self-insurance scheme for writers and artists that grew into the Guild of Literature and Art, and a list of his Examiner articles during this period, many of them newly attributed. Hardcover, red buckram with gilt lettering on the spine within a pale blue panel, in red and pale yellow dustwrapper. xxi, 758 pages, frontispiece plus ine further illustration. 6.25 X 9.5 inches.Very good book with some spots to the top edge in a very good dustwrapper.The dustwrapper is in a clear removable protective jacket.Included is an interesting handwritten signed letter on "Letters of Charles Dickens - Pilgrim Edition" headed notepaper from editor Kathleen Tillotson dated 1989 to a Mr Harries (Peter Harries of Boz books?) who has offered a hitherto unpublished letter by Charles Dickens for inclusion in the Pilgrim edition, the letter contains her response and comments on the letter... Reprinted with Corrections. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good.