This selection owes its existence to the Pilgrim Trustees, and I am grateful to Georgina Naylor at the Pilgrim Trust. The original Pilgrim Edition benefited from the generosity of the British Academy with funding, and from the subsequent adoption of the edition as an official research project. Mark Dickens has been supportive on behalf of the family. The illustration in the letter to Daniel Maclise of February 13 1840 is from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and America Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox and Tilden Foundations, reproduced by permission of Mark Dickens.
I am especially grateful to Michael Slater for his generous interest and unstinting support; and for his expert advice and judgement. It is a pleasure to record my thanks to him. The knowledge, assistance, and kindness of Angus Easson and Margaret Brown, both Pilgrim editors, have been invaluable. I would also like to thank Malcolm Andrews and David Paroissien; Joan Dicks and the Dickens Fellowship; Florian Schweizer at the Charles Dickens Museum, and Nick Hartley for his attentive and careful eye. At Oxford University Press, Jacqueline Baker has been the ideal editor. I am also grateful to Ariane Petit, Jackie Pritchard, and Fiona Vlemmiks for guiding the book expertly through to publication. It is a great privilege to have had the index made by Douglas Matthews.
The selection is respectfully dedicated to the editors, assistant editors, and associate editors of the British Academy Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens.
Specimens of signatures
1 .July 1832. 2. November 1834. 3. November 1835. 4. March 1836. 5 .October 1836. 6 .April 1837. 7 .March 1838. 8. November 1839. 9 . August 1840. 10. January 1842. 11. November 1842. 12. April 1846. 13. June 1847. 14. July 1861