DICKENS, Charles (1812-1870). Autograph letter signed ('Charles Dickens') to Ada, Countess of Lovelace, Chester Place, [London], 14 June 1847.

One page, 183 x 112mm, bifolium.

[With]: Edward BULWER-LYTTON. Autograph letter signed ('E.B. Lytton') to Ada Lovelace, James Street, [London], 'Saturday', n.d. [?1845]. Two pages, 135 x 90mm, with original envelope, and another unrelated envelope.

'I hope to break the spell': a letter to Ada Lovelace from the midst of writing Dombey and Son. 'On Thursday next, at half past seven, I hope to break the spell. Many thanks for giving me another chance of doing so!'.

The recipient is the mathematician and computer pioneer Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), a close friend of Dickens: the letter is evidently a belated acceptance of a social invitation. The phrase 'breaking the spell' very likely refers to his work on the tenth number of Dombey and Son: on the previous day Dickens had written to Macready: 'Tomorrow, and in deed every day until I have done my Number (not yet begun!) I have no business to venture out, until the owls are getting up'. Five years later, as Ada Lovelace lay on her death bed at the cruelly premature age of 36, Dickens was to read her the description of Paul Dombey's death from the novel. Not in the Pilgrim Edition.

In Edward Bulwer-Lytton's letter to Lady Lovelace he writes that he has sent her Geraldine Jewsbury's novel Zoe: the History of Two Lives (1845), commending the 'very startling' honesty of its first half, but concluding dismissively 'The third vol. is bad'.

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