The nearest we can get to a Dickens autobiography, these letters give us unique insights into his life, and are essential reading for Dickens fans everywhere. Whether you dip in or read straight through, this selection of his letters creates afresh the brilliance of being Dickens, and the sheer pleasure of being in his company.

This arrangement of nearly 6,000 of Dickens's letters shows how much creative energy overflowed into his daily correspondence.

What was it like to be Charles Dickens? His letters are the nearest we can get to a Dickens autobiography: vivid close-up snapshots of a life lived at maximum intensity. This is the first selection to be made from the magisterial twelve-volume British Academy Pilgrim Edition of his letters. From over fourteen thousand, four hundred and fifty have been cherry-picked to give readers the best essence of 'the Sparkler of Albion'. Dickens was a man with ten times the energy of ordinary mortals. There seem to have been twice the number of hours in his day, and he threw himself into letter-writing as he did into everything else. This eagerly awaited selection takes us straight to the heart of his life, to show us Dickens at first hand. Here he is writing out of the heat of the moment: as a novelist, journalist, and magazine editor; as a social campaigner and traveller in Europe and America, and as friend, lover, husband, and father. Reading and writing letters punctuated the rhythms of Dickens's day. 'I walk about brimful of letters', he told a friend. He claimed to write 'at the least, a dozen a day'. Sometimes it was a chore but more often a pleasure: an outlet for high spirits, sparkling wit, and caustic commentary - always as seen through his highly individual and acutely observing eye. Whether you dip in or read straight through, this selection of his letters creates afresh the brilliance of being Dickens, and the sheer pleasure of being in his company.

Excerpt from The Letters of Charles Dickens IN publishing this New Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens in a popular form, we have taken great pains to make our work complete. \ve have carefully revised and corrected the contents of our previous books, now condensed, chronologically, into two volumes. With a view to making our selection as perfect as possible, we have collected together the letters from Charles Dickens which have already been published in various Biographies, and have chosen those which we consider to be of the greatest interest. We intend this Collection of Letters to be a Supplement to the Life of Charles Dickens, by John Forster. That work, admirable and exhaustive as a biography, is only in complete as regards correspondence 3 the scheme of the book having made it impossible to include in its space any letters, or hardly any, besides those addressed to Mr. Forster. As no man ever expressed himself more in his letters than Charles Dickens, we believe that in publishing this careful selection from his general correspondence we are supplying a want which has been universally felt. Our request for the loan of letters was so promptly and fully responded to, that we have been provided with more than sufficient material for our work. By arranging the letters in chronological order, we find that they very fre quently explain themselves and form a narrative of the events of each year. Our collection dates from 1833, the commencement of Charles Dickens' literary life, just before the starting of the Pickwick Papers, and is carried on up to the day before his death, in 1870. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This volume presents 1,592 letters, 668 of them previously unpublished, for the years 1850 to 1852. This was a time of great activity for Dickens, who completed the serial publication of David Copperfield, began work on Bleak House, successfully established the weekly Household Words (in which his own serial A Child's History of England appeared), and wrote about 100 articles and stories for the journal, including many uncollected pieces. In April 1851 he and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton founded the Guild of Literature and Art, a scheme to help writers and artists. He also suffered a number of personal blows: the deaths of his father, his baby daughter Dora, and two of his close friends, Richard Watson and Alfred D'Orsay; there was also anxiety over the illness of his wife Catherine.

A lively and accessible introduction for general readers, students, teachers, and academics.