The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To OBADIAH RICH,1 5 JANUARY 1843

Text from facsimile in R. & R. Enterprises online catalogue, 24April 2005. 

1 Devonshire Terrace / York Gate Regents Park

Fifth January 1843.2

 Mr. Charles Dickens sends his compliments to Mr. Rich, and begs to acknowledge the safe receipt of the American Parcel.3 

• 1. Obadiah Rich (1783-1850; Dictionary of American Biography), consular officer and bookseller. United States consular officer in Valencia, 1816; 1823, in charge of archive of Madrid legation; 1834-45, consul in the Balearics, though absent the majority of the time. Settled in London c. 1829 as bookseller and American agent, at 12 Red Lion Square, taking his sons into partnership (for James, see Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 596 & n.) Provided the American historian, William Hinkling Prescott (1796-1859; Dictionary of American Biography), with books and manuscript materials towards his histories of Spain and Latin America. Prescott contacted CD, whom he had met in Boston, in Jan 42 (Pilgrim Letters 3, p. 19 n.3), about the British publication of Mme Calderón’s Life in Mexico (below), using Rich to transmit the American edition to CD, who passed it to Chapman & Hall (see To Edward Chapman, 16 Sep 42, and To Prescott, 2 Mar 43; Pilgrim Letters 3, pp. 324, 456).
• 2. Year altered from 1842, probably by another hand, to correct CD’s slip at beginning of a new year.
• 3. Containing the first half of the second volume of Mme Calderón’s Life in Mexico (1843). Frances Calderón (née Inglis; 1804-82) married Spain’s first Minister to the United States, Angelo Calderón de la Barca, in 1838; the book is based on her experiences when Calderón was first Minister to Mexico. Prescott was transmitting the American printing in three batches, CD’s letter referring to the second, despatched mid Dec (The Correspondence of William Hinkling Prescott 1833-1847, ed. R. Walcott, Boston, 1925, pp. 322, 328).