BLACK, John. 20305

£75

Description

Autograph Letter Signed ‘John Black’, to ‘My dear Sir’, asking him “for gods sake return me the letter I sent you”, referring to a row in the Times. 1 page 7 x 4 inches, some offsetting, otherwise good. 332 Strand, 7 September 1836. John Black (1783-1855), first editor of Charles Dickens, Editor ‘Morning Chronicle’ 1817-1843. According to Forster, Dickens was in his twenty-third year when he became a reporter on the Morning Chronicle. At this time the Chronicle was edited by John Black, who had conducted it ever since Perry’s death, and the office of the paper from June, 1834, until it died in 1862, was 332 Strand, opposite Somerset House, a building pulled down under the Strand improvement scheme. It had then been for nearly forty years—ever since the Chronicle vacated it, in fact—the office of another newspaper, the Weekly Times and Echo. Sketches by Boz was published in 1836. In this letter Black writes: “I have received some half dozen of letters accusing me of partiality in not inserting it as I promised.”