Beschreibung:

DICKENS, CHARLES. Autograph letter signed (a large "Charles Dickens" with paraph) to Lord Stanley, 15 Furnivals Inn, London, 8 February 1836. 2 1/2 pages, small 4to, written in a calligraphic hand on fine, gilt-edged paper, docketed on blank fourth page, slight showthrough, the usual creases from folding ; in very good condition. DICKENS PRESENTS THE FIRST COPY OF Sketches by Boz Sketches by "Boz," Dickens's first book, had been published the day before (7 February) on his 24th birthday. Dickens had received six personal copies, but was only able to send out one -- the presentation copy to Lord Stanley. The recipient, Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, later fourteenth Earl of Derby, three times Prime Minister, translator of the Iliad , was at this time Secretary of State for Ireland: this is Dickens's only known letter to him. "When I was connected with 'The Mirror of Parliament' in the capacity of a reporter, I had the honor to wait on Your Lordship, for the purpose of taking a faithful report of a portion of Your Lordship's Speech, on moving the Second reading of the Irish Disturbances Bill, from your own mouth: Your Lordship having been pleased to express so high an opinion of the report of that part of your Speech which had originally fallen into my hands, as to select me for the task. I trust Your Lordship will forgive my recalling so unimportant a circumstance to your recollection when I advert to it, merely as an apology for the liberty I take, in entreating Your Lordship's acceptance of the accompanying Volumes -- the first I ever published...The wish of Authors to place their works in the hands of those, the eminence of whose public stations, is only to be exceeded by the lustre of their individual talents, is, and always has been, so generally felt, even by the greatest Men who have ever adorned the Literature of this Country, that I hope it may be pardoned when it displays itself in so young, and so humble a candidate for public favor, as...Your Lordship's most obedient, Humble servant Charles Dickens " Letters , ed. House and Storey, vol. 1, p. 126. Provenance : Comte Alain de Suzannet (sale, Sotheby's London, 23 November 1971, lot 196) -- Unnamed consignor (sale, Sotheby's London, 23 July 1987, lot 49).