DICKENS, Charles (presentation).

£17,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. Inscribed by Charles Dickens to a protégé in the publication year on the Volume I half-title, "J. A. Overs from Charles Dickens, 1st November 1840". John Overs, a carpenter, made Dickens's lion couchant bookplate in the same year. Dickens nurtured Overs's literary interests and later wrote the preface to his sole book, Evenings of a Working Man (1844).Dickens wrote in his preface to Overs's book, "it has been a pleasure to me to put a few books in his way" (p. ix). Overs (1808-1844) first wrote to Dickens in January 1839, hoping to be published in Bentley's Miscellany, though Dickens resigned his editorial role there soon after. Dickens initially warned Overs against neglecting his employment to pursue a literary career. However, he was satisfied when Overs explained he wrote only in his leisure time, both to further his education and to provide more for his wife and children. Dickens spent the next few years reading and revising Overs's writings, often in person during their spare Sunday hours together. As Overs's health declined, Dickens found him lighter employment at the Drury Lane theatre. Dickens later supported Overs's family following his death from tuberculosis at the age of 34.The scholar Sheila M. Smith suggested that Overs might have influenced Dickens's The Chimes (1844). "A working man of this kind, goaded to such feelings, would have aroused Dickens's sympathy at a period when the novelist was experiencing his most violent in

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