The Tavistock Letter

Source

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, MA 107.43.

Notepaper headed in a gothic typeface 'Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London, W.C'. On the paper, handwritten in ink, fifteen lines of Brachygraphy shorthand set in four paragraphs.

The Tavistock Letter. © The Morgan Library & Museum, MA 107.43.

Description

Shorthand copy of a letter that Dickens wrote to J. T. Delane, editor of The Times, in May 1859.

Transcription

I feel obliged, though very reluctantly, to appeal to you in person from a circumstance that occurred at The Times advertisement office yesterday. There was, yesterday, taken to that office in the usual way, an advertisement for three days next week of the contents of number 3 of All The Year Round with a particular in it, which […] has been in the […] and all the […] papers for weeks and weeks past, announcing that after Ascension Day Household Words will be discontinued by me and its partnership of proprietors dissolved. The advertisement was refused and sent back with a message that this particular was untrue and unfair. As to its truth, it is absolutely impossible that something can be more true because it states, without a word of comment, a plain and simple fact. As to its fairness, it is judged by Romilly in open court and is taken from the shorthand writer’s notes of a judgement of his. I feel convinced that there must be some […] […] […] […] […] of/in what cannot, on any ground of sense or reason, be […]ed and I am sure I may ask at your […] to have it restored.

Transcription credits

With thanks to: Amy D, Charlotte, Clarissa Parkinson, D.P.J.A Scheers, Fiona Randell, Frances T, James Mulliss, Ken Cox, L. P. Wist, Shane Baggs, and Vita Minichiello.

Rights

© The Morgan Library & Museum, MA 107.43. Acquired by Pierpont Morgan before 1913. Photograph by Janny Chiu. Please seek further permission from the Morgan Library to reuse this image.

Further reading

The Tavistock Letter