The Charles Dickens Letters Project

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Individual letter:

Dickens, Charles. To [addressee], [date of letter]. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). [URL of individual letter], [date of access].

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Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Emily Bell, Lydia Craig and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship), DickensLetters.com.

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Period:

1851-1860

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visual arts

celebrity

public recognition

To GEORGE GROVE1, 12 JANUARY 1852

Text from facsimile in Bloomsbury Auctions online catalogue, March 2016.

Tavistock House

Twelfth January 1852

Sir

I have read with great satisfaction the excellent project you have communicated to me for the establishment of Drawing Schools for Artisans, and have the utmost pleasure in consenting to be one of the proposed committee.2

Faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

George Grove Esquire.

1. Sir George Grove (1820-1900; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), writer on music and lexicographer; as Secretary of the Society of Arts he was involved in the planning of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
2. Public interest in the organisation of artisan drawing education was stimulated by the Great Exhibition, and the 1851 Drawing School Committee was re-formed in 1852 with 13 members, including the Earl of Carlisle, Henry Cole and CD. See David Jerome, 'General Notes', Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 117 (April 1969): 365-7.