The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ,1 23 NOVEMBER 1850

Text from facsimile in the possession of Dietmar Böhnke.2

Replaces extract (aa) in Pilgrim Letters 6, p. 214.

aLondon 1 Devonshire Terrace | Twenty Third November 1850.

Dear Sir

I much regret not having the pleasure of seeing you this year,3 and also the unfortunate cause of your not visiting England.4 I beg to acknowledge the safe receipt of your draft for £a35,5 aand to assure you that I shall not fail to give you timely notice of any new work I may undertake.a6

Dear Sir | Very faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

M. Bernhard Tauchnitz

• 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. See Dietmar Böhnke, “The Lost Leipzig Letters: Charles Dickens, Bernhard Tauchnitz and the German Connection” in Stefan Welz and Elmar Schenkel (eds.), Dickens on the Move: Travels and Transformations, Charles Dickens Bicentenary, Conference 2012, Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2014, pp. 151-166.
• 3. Tauchnitz's visit to England untraced.
• 4. The reason for Tauchnitz's abandonment of his visit not discovered.
• 5. For publication of David Copperfield in Tauchntiz’s “Collection of British Authors”; see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 609n. Payment was received into CD’s bank account with Coutts & Co. on 29 Nov 1850, as "Bill on Fruhling & Co." (the German bank Fruhling & Goschen, at 12 Austin Friars, London).
• 6. As CD's authorised publisher in Germany, Tauchnitz not only received advance notice of the publication of new works by CD; he was also sent proofs of these works, so that German and British publication of CD's works could coincide.