A "Prologue" to Wilkie Collins's play The Lighthouse. Autograph manuscript of 1 leaf; on 2 pages; containing approximately 190 words. Dickens wrote this piece for Collins's melodrama when it was first staged at Tavistock House in June 1856.
An "Address" to readers of Household Words. Autograph manuscript of 1 leaf; on 1 page; containing approximately 300 words. Dickens announces that he is starting a new magazine, All the Year Round, and will no longer be associated with Household Words. Bradbury and Evans, who held a proprietary share in Household Words, claimed that Dickens maliciously killed the magazine with this piece, which was published in Household Words, Vol. XIX, Whole No. 479 (28 May 1859), page [601].
A fragment of manuscript for "Aboard Ship," in New Uncommercial Samples. Autograph manuscript of 1 leaf; on 1 page; containing approximately 315 words. This passage, where the traveller sails from New York aboard a ship crowded with flowers, was published originally in All the Year Round, New Series, Vol. I, No. 1 (5 December 1868), page 13.
Revisions in proof for The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Autograph manuscript on page proof of 106 leaves; on 16 pages; containing approximately 15 words, and scattered editorial marks, in the hand of Dickens. There are 209 pages of printed text in these leaves of proof which Dickens gave to S. Luke Fildes to guide him in illustrating the novel. The full text of the novel is here, with a duplicate set of gathering M (pages 161-176), one leaf of galleys, and three fragmentary pieces of proof. All is described in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, edited by Margaret Cardwell (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1972), on pages [256]-266.
Fragments of the manuscript of the play, O'Thello. Autograph manuscript of 2 leaves; on 4 pages; containing approximately 495 words. The first leaf, from an unknown part of the play, is headed on both sides by the following handwritten testimony: "This manuscript is in the handwriting of Mr. Charles Dickens forming a leaf of the manuscript of a burlesque on Othello, written by him for performance in his own family in the year 1833," signed "John Dickens, Alphington, 17 July 1842." The second leaf is a fragment of Act I, Scene 3. The play was not printed.
Fragments of the manuscript of the play, O'Thello. Autograph manuscript of 2 leaves; on 4 pages; containing approximately 495 words. The first leaf, from an unknown part of the play, is headed on both sides by the following handwritten testimony: "This manuscript is in the handwriting of Mr. Charles Dickens forming a leaf of the manuscript of a burlesque on Othello, written by him for performance in his own family in the year 1833," signed "John Dickens, Alphington, 17 July 1842." The second leaf is a fragment of Act I, Scene 3. The play was not printed.
Revisions in a fragment of proof for "Doctor's Commons," in Sketches by Boz, Second Series: "His clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see that he wore them so, from choice, and not from necessity; all his looks and gestures down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and then took from a little tin canister, told of wealth, and penury, and avarice." Autograph manuscript on page-proof of 1/3 leaf, on 1 page, quoted in full. The printed text covers both sides of this small piece of proof. Published originally in the first edition of Sketches by Boz, Second Series (London: John Macrone, 1837), on pages, 188-189.
Autograph letter, signed, of 16 December 1869, published in Nonesuch III, pages 760-761. The letter was not written on 16 January 1870, as claimed in Nonesuch.
Autograph letter, signed, with envelope, of 27 April 1870, containing approximately 55 words. London. Dickens will see Fildes on the next day; he suggests the subjects to be illustrated in part No. V of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
