The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 15 FEBRUARY 1853

Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2

Tavistock House | Fifteenth February 1853

My Dear Sir

Have you received a second letter I wrote you on the subject of my boy,3 a few weeks ago?4 If you have, and have not yet been able to find a German home for him, pray do not take the trouble to reply to this.5 But I write, in case my letter should by any chance have miscarried. It was rather a long and full one.

Ever faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Baron Bernhard Christian Tauchnitz (1816-95), publisher, of Leipzig. Born at Schleinitz; nephew of the publisher Karl Tauchnitz. Founded his own firm in Leipzig in 1837. The firm began its “Collection of British Authors” Sep 1841 with Bulwer Lytton’s Pelham. Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and American Notes had appeared before the end of 1842, and Nicholas Nickleby in June 1843. He and CD became friendly, and CD sent Charley to Leipzig to learn German. According to John Forster, Tauchnitz always paid liberally. He wrote to Forster after CD’s death: “All Mr Dickens’s works have been published under agreement by me. My intercourse with him lasted nearly twenty-seven years. The first of his letters dates in October 1843, and his last at the close of March, 1870 [see To Tauchnitz, 31 March 1870]. Our long relations were not only never troubled by the least disagreement, but were the occasion of most hearty personal feeling; and I shall never lose the sense of his kind and friendly nature. On my asking him his terms for Edwin Drood, he replied, ‘Your terms shall be mine’” (John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, ed. J.W.T. Ley [London: Cecil Palmer, 1928], p. 807n).
• 2. Böhnke published his transcription in "The Correspondence between Charles Dickens and Bernhard Tauchnitz: General Observations and Newly Discovered Letters", Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013), p. 319.
• 3. Charles Culliford Boz Dickens ("Charley", 1837-96), CD's eldest son, whom CD wished to send to Germany to learn the language.
• 4. See To Tauchnitz, 14 Jan 1853. For the first letter about Charley's sojourn in Germany see To Tauchnitz, 22 Dec 1852, in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 832.
• 5. Charley lodged with Professor O. C. Müller, 6 Tauchaer Strasse, Leipzig, a schoolmaster.