RICHARD HENRY DANA JR 1842 AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ABOUT CHARLES DICKENS

Description: [DICKENS, CHARLES]. DANA, RICHARD HENRY, JR. Autograph Letter Signed from Richard Henry Dana Jr., Giving the Ecstatic Response of America to the Visit of Charles Dickens. Boston: 3 1/4 pages (9 3/4 by 7 3/4 inches, January 31, 1842. Original Autograph Letter Signed (“Richd. H. Dana Jr.”) written to Dana’s English publisher, Edward Moxon describing the amazingly warm response of Americans to Charles Dickens visiting Boston. An absorbing letter showing Dana’s wonderful narrative abilities of which more than half is devoted to Dana’s account of Dickens’s stay in Boston during the English author’s celebrated first trip to America in 1842. Moxon was the British publisher of Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast and the recently issued The Seaman’s Friend. “... We have Dickens here with us, & the whole town is crazy [the author and his wife arrived in Boston from England on 22 January]. I doubt if a literary man ever made such a ‘progress’ through a country as he is making through ours. Indeed, I am certain it will be an era in literary history ... From the moment the steamer was sighted, up to this hour. The whole community has been in a high fever ... he is obliged to refuse all visitors except at certain hours, & then he holds a regular levee. The other day, when he went to sit for his portrait, on coming out, he found the ante room, staircase, etc., lined with people, young & old. One old lady asked him to stand still & let the ladies form a ring round, so that all could see him. This was too much for his risibles, & he laughed out, & told her eager ladyship that he was sorry, etc., but was in a hurry — & was going off; when the ladies called out to the artist, ‘Do, Mr. A. stop him! Don’t let him go!’ In the meanwhile the standard men of literature & wealth are paying him every attention, & like him exceedingly ... I have met him several times & like him very much. How full of life he is! ... He told me much, in the way of answering questions, about yourself, ‘ our friend,’ as you call him, Capt. Ives, & others of whom I was curious to inquire ... Dickens has told us many anecdotes of [Charles] Lamb, some of which are not yet published, & which interested us very much. You don’t know what a feeling there is here about Lamb ...” Boston’s adulatory reception of the English writer reached its climax the next day (1 February) with a great banquet held in his honor which Dana also attended. Dickens’s visit to the United States (he returned to England in June) resulted in his American Notes for General Circulation (1842). Written in brown ink on a bifolium of gray paper with small embossed stamp of T. Groom, Boston; address panel, postmark, and remnants of red sealing wax. A rare view of Dickens in America through the eyes of a significant American writer.

Price: 9000 USD

Location: Santa Barbara, California

End Time: 2025-01-21T21:33:05.000Z

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