The Daniel and Alice Ryan Collection

Daniel Ryan has been collecting Dickens material for six decades. In May of 2018, Dan and his wife Alice decided to donate the bulk of that collection to Gordon Library, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), in the form of a bequest. This remarkable collection complements WPI’s existing Robert D. Fellman Dickens Collection and provides an invaluable resource for scholars and students. An exhibit including items from the Daniel and Alice Ryan Collection can be viewed at Gordon Library through September 2020.

The Ryan Collection is rich in early printed materials such as first editions and original serial parts of Dickens’s works, as well as early printings in English and American newspapers. It is also rich in secondary materials: works of criticism, bibliography, and historical and cultural context. But two other elements are of particular interest: letters and documents, and works of art. Here, I shall give special attention to the letters, and offer a few remarks about the works of art.

The collection includes ten letters written by Charles Dickens. The earliest letter, declining an invitation from A. W. Arnold, is undated, but Dickens wrote it from 48 Doughty Street, therefore sometime between 25 March 1837 and 12 December 1839. Unpublished in the Pilgrim Edition (apart from one sentence; Letters 7: 808), the letter reads thus:

My Dear Sir

I am prevented by another engagement from availing myself of your kind invitation. But if you should see fit to repeat it on some more auspicious occasion, I hope to be more fortunate.

Accept my thanks for your kind recollection of me in the matter of the Free List. And believe me

Very truly yours

Charles Dickens

A. W. Arnold Esquire

There are two letters from the 1840s. The first, mentioned in Pilgrim (4: 61) but not published there, is addressed to G. Herbert Rodwell, who wrote songs for Edward Stirling’s stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Dickens grants the music publisher D’Almaine & Co. his permission to reproduce one of John Leech’s illustrations, “Scrooge’s Third Visitor,” in the sheet music:

Devonshire Terrace

Saturday Second March 1844

Dear Sir

I have been out of town, or I would have answered your letter before – Mr. D’Almaine is at perfect liberty to use the Lithograph for the purpose proposed. And pray thank that gentleman in my name for the handsome book he had so kindly sent me by your hands.

Faithfully Yours, Charles Dickens

G. Herbert Rodwell Esquire

The next letter, wholly unpublished, is written to the playwright John B. Buckstone; undated, it is almost certainly from 7 April 1847. The letter is written and signed by Dickens, but also signed by Dickens’s friends, the artists Clarkson Stanfield and Daniel Maclise:

My Dear Sir

Stanfield, Maclise, and I are going to the Adelphi tonight to see your new piece. Have you got such a thing as a Box to bestow on us?

If so, your petitioners will ever pray etc.

As witness our hands

Charles Dickens

C. Stanfield

Daniel Maclise

J. B. Buckstone Esquire

In a letter to Forster of 9 April 1847 Dickens writes “we got a box from Buckstone (Stanny, Mac, and I), and went to the Adelphi the night before last” (5: 55). The “new piece” was Buckstone’s The Flowers of the Forest: A Gypsy Story, which had opened 11 March 1847.

A cache of 14 letters written by Dickens to Georgiana Morson, the governess of Urania Cottage, was discovered in 2001 among the belongings of Morson’s descendant, and were offered at auction. Dan Ryan was the only collector outside of Europe to acquire a letter from this cache at the time. This letter, dated 13 January 1854, treats financial matters and mentions Angela Burdett-Coutts; it is published in the Pilgrim Edition (12: 655).

Another letter, dated 19 June 1857, has been paraphrased, but not yet published in full, in Pilgrim (12: 678). The letter is to William Hepworth Dixon, and pertains to a charitable committee organized in memory of Douglas Jerrold, who died eleven days earlier:

My dear Dixon

I have adopted your...