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Creator
Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870
Call number
Berg Coll MSS Dickens [Text]
Physical description
1,225 items
Preferred Citation

[Identification of the item]. The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library.

Repository
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.
Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

This is a synthetic collection consisting of manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence, diaires for 1867 and 1868, notebooks for 1843 through 1870, financial and legal documents, portraits and pictorial works.

Biographical/historical information

Charles Dickens was a British novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist.

Scope and arrangement

This is a synthetic collection consisting of manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence by and about the author, diaires for 1867 and 1868, notebooks for 1843 through 1870, financial and legal documents, portraits and pictorial works. There are a number of pen and ink, watercolor, and pencil drawings of illustrations for Dickens' novels by H. K. Browne, John Leech, J. C. Clarke, Frederic Pailthorpe, and George Cruikshank. The manuscripts include drafts and passages from novels, stories, poems, scenarios, captions, essays, and miscellaneous autograph material of the author, as well as essays, plays, bibliographies, lectures, and other manuscript material about the author from George Bentley, Richard Bentley, Wilkie Collins, Vladimir Nabokov, and others. The correspondence includes letters, dating from [1833] to 1870, by the author to Richard Bentley, the Reverand W. H. Brookfield, Robert Browning, George Cattermole, William F. De Cerjat, Chapman and Hall, Wilkie Collins, George Cruikshank, Peter Cunningham, his brother Frederick Dickens, George Dolby, Professor C. C. Felton, James T. Fields, Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, Georgina Hogarth, Leigh Hunt, Washington Irving, Frances Maria Kelly, Walter Savage Landor, Emile de la Rue, Mark Lemon, George Henry Lewes, Charles Mackay, Daniel Maclise, Thomas Mitton, Edgar Allan Poe, David Roberts, Clarkson Stanfield, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Sir James Emerson Tennent, William Makepeace Thackeray, Frances Trollope, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, W. H. Wills, and others. Also included are letters relating to the author, dating from 1836 to [1975], between various correspondents including Alfred Ainger, Alexander Macmillan, Richard Harris Barham, George Bentley, Richard Bentley, George Cruikshank, Washington Irving, Georgina Hogarth, W. M. Rossetti, Frederic G. Kitton, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens Jr., Henry F. Dickens, and others. Present, also, are letters to Dickens from Richard Bentley, George Cruikshank, Walter Savage Landor, E. S. Morgan, A. P. Watt and Son, and others, dating from [1836?] through 1891.

The Charles Dickens collection of papers are arranged in four series:

Administrative information

Custodial history

The bulk of the materials is from Henry W. and Albert A. Berg, W. T. H. Howe, and Owen D. Young. Much of this and other materials were previously owned by Jerome Kern, B. W. Matz, Frederick William Cosens, Harry Glemby, Herschel V. Jones, M. C. D. Borden, George Barr McCutcheon, and Roderick Terry, Esther Leech, C. R. Leslie, Miss M. A. Browne, Eve Clendenin, Richard Henry Stoddard-Howe, Mrs. Rebecca Ball Wilson, Thomas Hatton, Hobart F. Cole, and William H. MacAfee. R. H. Barham's holograph notebook and commonplace book was a gift of Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. Hyde in honor of Dr. Albert A. Berg.

Source of acquisition

This is a synthetic collection, created from materials acquired through gift and purchase from various sources.

Processing information

Processed by Staff; Machine-readable finding aid created by Lynn Lobash and Nina Schneider.

Key terms

Names

Material types

Using the collection

Location

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Third Floor, Room 320

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, contact the Curator, The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.

Alternative form available

Microfilm of selected items in the collection is available: Dickens' 1867 holograph diary; Dickens' reading copies; Dicken's reading copy of Christmas Carol, 1849; Dickens' Sikes and Nancy, 1921; Dickens' Gaskell letters; Dickens' reading copies of the Boy at Mugby and signalman; Dickens' Boots at the Holly Tree Inn, 1858; Great Expectations; and Dickens' holograph memoranda book; and Francesco Berger's Overture to the drama by Mr. Wilkie Collins, The Frozen Deep, 1857. Contact the staff for more information.