The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete

Opening of the book

THE LIFE
OF
Charles Dickens
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
THREE VOLUMES IN TWO.
VOL. I.

————————
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1875.
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
VOL. I.
1812-1842.
TO THE
DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS,
M Y   G O D - D A U G H T E R   M A R Y
AND
HER SISTER KATE,
This Book is Dedicated

BY THEIR FRIEND,
AND THEIR FATHER'S FRIEND AND EXECUTOR,
JOHN FORSTER
NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
Such has been the rapidity of the demand for successive
impressions of this book, that I have found it impossible,
until now, to correct at pages 31, 87, and 97 three errors
of statement made in the former editions; and some few
other mistakes, not in themselves important, at pages 96,
101, and 102. I take the opportunity of adding that the
mention at p. 83 is not an allusion to the well-known
"Penny"
and
"Saturday"
Magazines,
but
to
weekly
periodicals of some years' earlier date resembling them in
form. One of them, I have since found from a later mention
by Dickens himself, was presumably of a less wholesome and
instructive character. "I used," he says, "when I was at
school, to take in the Terrific Register, making myself
unspeakably miserable, and frightening my very wits out of
my head, for the small charge of a penny weekly; which,
considering that there was an illustration to every number
in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least
one body, was cheap." An obliging correspondent writes to
me upon my reference to the Fox-under-the-hill, at p. 62:
"Will you permit me to say that the house, shut up and
almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of a
curious and most precipitous court, the entrance of which
is just past Salisbury Street. . . . It was once, I think,
the approach to the halfpenny boats. The house is now shut
out from the water-side by the Embankment."
Palace Gate House, Kensington,
23d December, 1871.

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