3-057-375 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Letter from Charles Dickens to 'George Eliot' (Mary Ann Evans), the novelist, thanking her for a copy of "Scenes of Clerical Life"; 18 January 1858. The letter is addressed to 'George Eliot Esquire'. '...I am (I presume) bound to adopt the name that it pleases that excellent writer to assume. I can suggest no better one; but I should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman. I have observed what seem to me to be such womanly touches, in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me, even now. If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself, mentally, so like a woman, since the world began. You will not suppose that I have any vulgar wish to fathom your secret...If it should ever suit your convenience and inclination, to shew me the face of the man or woman who has written so charmingly, it will be a very memorable occasion to me. If otherwise, I shall always hold that impalpable personage in loving attachment and respect, and shall yield myself up to all future utterances from the same source, with a perfect confidence in their making me wiser and better. Your obliged and faithful Servant, and admirer, Charles Dickens'.