Details
DICKENS, Charles. "Threatening Letter to Thomas Hood, from an Ancient Gentleman. By favor of Charles Dickens." In: Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany. Vol. I. January to June, 1844. Pages [409] - 414. London: H. Renshaw, for the Proprietors, 1844.
8o (207 x 135 mm). Contents: Half-title, engraved frontispiece of Hood, title-page, pp. 407 - 620. (Lightly browned, some spotting.) 19th-century full green pebble-grain cloth, gilt. Provenance: W. Miller (bookplate); Noel Charles Peyrouton, Associate editor of the Pilgrim Edition of Dickens's Letters (bookplate); Kenyon Starling (bookplate).
A satire on the then current craze for the midget Tom Thumb: "I have made inquiry, Mr. Hood, and find that in my neighbourhood two families and a fraction out of every four, in the lower and middle classes of society, are studying and practicing all conceivable arts to keep their infant children down. Understand me. I do not mean down in their numbers, or down in their precocity, but down in their growth, Sir. A destructive and subduing drink, compounded of gin and milk in equal quantities, such as is given to puppies to retard their growth: not something short, but something shortening is administered to these young creatures many times a day." Dickens also contributed extracts from A Christmas Carol to earlier issues of the Magazine, more as a favor than anything else, to the ailing Hood who died in May 1845. (DNB). Yale/Gimbel E111.
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A satire on the then current craze for the midget Tom Thumb: "I have made inquiry, Mr. Hood, and find that in my neighbourhood two families and a fraction out of every four, in the lower and middle classes of society, are studying and practicing all conceivable arts to keep their infant children down. Understand me. I do not mean down in their numbers, or down in their precocity, but down in their growth, Sir. A destructive and subduing drink, compounded of gin and milk in equal quantities, such as is given to puppies to retard their growth: not something short, but something shortening is administered to these young creatures many times a day." Dickens also contributed extracts from A Christmas Carol to earlier issues of the Magazine, more as a favor than anything else, to the ailing Hood who died in May 1845. (DNB). Yale/Gimbel E111.