The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD,1 24 SEPTEMBER 1857 

Text from facsimile in University Archives online catalogue, June 2018.

Gad's Hill Place, Higham

Thursday night Twenty Fourth September | 1857 

My Dear Sir

            I am doubtful as to the Twenty Shillings in the Pound, and should like to take time to consider it.2

            I accept the other paper with great pleasure. I have called it "Poor Tom. A City Weed"3 – have made an occasional alteration in a word, or the setting out of a paragraph – and have added a parenthesis towards the close, which I hope carries out your meaning with a slight, affecting touch.4 You will judge for yourself, in going over the Proof which I direct the Printers to send you.

            When you correct it, will you point the sentences so as to make them very plain to the eye?

            I am charmed with the paper, and think it extremely good.

            My Dear Sir

                        Very faithfully Yours

                        CHARLES DICKENS

John Hollingshead Esquire.

• 1. John Hollingshead (1827-1904; Dictionary of National Biography), journalist and, later, theatre manager. After working as a clerk and commercial traveller, became a prolific contributor to periodicals; wrote for Punch, the Leader, Cornhill, the Train, Household Words and All the Year Round, and many others. For a time dramatic critic on the Daily News. Contributed regularly to Household Words from Oct 1857; became a member of the journal's staff 1859. He greatly admired CD: in My Lifetime (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1895) he includes himself among the "Dickens young men" (I, 96) and refers to CD as "the master" (I, 97); but stresses that he did not imitate CD and that CD very rarely altered his articles (I, 96). Hollingshead later became manager of the Gaiety Theatre 1868-86, and Director of several Music Hall companies; he is credited with bringing Gilbert and Sullivan together for the first time in 1871.
• 2. "Twenty Shillings in the Pound", which described dishonest business practices, was eventually accepted, and published in Household Words 16 (7 Nov 1857): 444-6. See To John Hollingshead, 4 Oct 1857.
• 3. "Poor Tom. – A City Weed", concerning the career of a poor but honest clerk, was published in Household Words 16 (17 Oct 1857): 381-4.
• 4. CD's parenthesis reads, "(Though I know his address—somewhere in Heaven, poor dear Tom!—I didn't say so)" ("Poor Tom", p. 384).