DICKENS CHARLES: (1812-1870) English Novelist.

DICKENS CHARLES: (1812-1870) English Novelist.
A fine A.L.S., Charles Dickens (a good example, with paraph), one page, 8vo, Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent, 26th June 1866, to George Dolby ('My dear Dolby'). Dickens writes, in full, 'Assuming that your domestic anxieties [regarding his wife's pregnancy] will be over by Saturday the 14th July, will you come down here on that day and arrange to stay over the Monday, so that we may see something of the country? I have asked Mr. Arthur Chappell for the same time and have told him (both by this same post) that I am writing to you'. With blank integral leaf. About EXGeorge Dolby (1831-1900) English Theatre Manager, employed by the publishers Chappell & Co. to manage Dickens' reading tour of 1866. In her biography Dickens: A Life (2011) Claire Tomalin describes Dolby as 'a big man, full of energy, optimism and know-how, and talkative, with a stammer he bravely disregarded. He was thirty-five, just married, a theatre manager out of work and keen to take on the running of Dickens' next reading tour. He was sent by Chappell, the music publishers who were setting up the tour, and he won Dickens' confidence at once and quickly became a friend. They laughed and joked together like boys, and enjoyed the small rituals of travel'. Dolby wrote of his experiences in Charles Dickens As I Knew Him (1885).Samuel Arthur Chappell (1834-1904) English Publisher, youngest son of Samuel Chappell of the music publishers Chappell & Co.Dickens' last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, had been published in 1865. In 1866, the year of the present letter, despite not being in the most robust health, Dickens accepted an offer of £1500 from Chappell & Co to participate in a series of thirty public readings in London and the provinces. It was the first such tour he had undertaken for three years. The tour concluded on 12th June 1866, shortly before the date of the present letter, and it would be reasonable to assume that the weekend planned by Dickens would give himself the opportunity to review the tour with Dolby and Chappell, and also discuss the next which was scheduled to start in the following January.Dickens created some of the world's best known fictional characters and his novels have enjoyed lasting popularity. Regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, critics and scholars of the 20th century have recognised Dickens as a literary genius.