The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THOMAS CARLYLE,1 13 JULY 18542 

after British Library. add Address (MS, envelope only, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Autog. Dickens, Charles): Angleterre | affranchie | Thomas Carlyle Esquire | 5 Upper Cheyne Walk | Chelsea | London. PM JY 14 1854. 

• 1. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881; Dictionary of National Biography), controversialist and historian. Despite his contempt for novels and indifference to Pickwick, he had found CD on first meeting, March 1840, a “shrewd-looking, little fellow, who seems to guess pretty well what he is and what others are” (see Pilgrim Letters 2, p. 141n) and became a friend. CD was greatly influenced politically and socially by his writings, notably The French Revolution, 1837, and Past and Present, 1843.
• 2. CD’s letter (Pilgrim Letters 7, pp. 367-8) asks permission to dedicate Hard Times to Carlyle.