DICKENS, Charles.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Original autograph leaf from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Original autograph manuscript leaf with authorial emendations from the Pickwick Papers, the novel that transformed an obscure 25-year-old journalist into England's most famous author in a matter of months. One of only five such leaves remaining in private hands, this leaf is from the setting manuscript used by the printers. Fewer than 50 of the estimated 1,500 pages that constituted it are known to survive. In keeping with the convention of the time, Dickens's authorial manuscripts were discarded after being set in type. However, on this occasion, Charles Hicks (c.1799-1870), the foreman-printer for Bradbury and Evans, who printed the book for Chapman and Hall, salvaged some of the original. Hicks's salvage, comprising 33 leaves from Chapters 36 and 37, makes up "the largest number of contiguous Pickwick manuscript leaves known to survive" (Long, p. 32).As Dickens's fame grew, he "became increasingly aware of the value of his manuscripts... and he sought with limited success to retain what he could of his early work" (Long, p. 32). Dickens wrote to Hicks around September 1838 requesting that "'when you have time be good enough to look me up all the old copy you have of mine, as I am very anxious to have it complete'... Dickens's instruction is said to be the 'first recorded instance of CD's collection of his own MSS'" (Long, p. 31). In May 1840, when Dickens donated five slips from Chapter 39 of Pickwick

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