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The Dickens Controversy in The Spirit of The Times
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Abstract
The history of the piracy of Dickens' humorous works in the New York Spirit op the Times shows that both his presence in and his disappearance from the paper contributed to the shape of early comic realism in America. The Spirit (1831-61) is generally thought to have been devoted to the tall tales and humorous yarns of the South and Southwest, but its editor, William T. Porter, also pirated British serials such as Pickwick just when potential American humorists were beginning to read and contribute to the Spirit. The evidence in the journal indicates that they deliberately imitated Dickens. After the publication of American Notes, letters to the editor violently attacking Dickens reveal some acute American sensitivities of the period. When Porter saw that American Notes was creating a controversy, he stopped pirating Dickens' works and encouraged his contributors as humorists in their own right. Thus Dickens inadvertently played an influential role in what is usually thought of as a purely native American literary genre.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1970
References
1 See “To Our Friends and Patrons,” Spirit, 1 (3 March 1832), third unnumbered page.
2 As expressed, e.g., in his first issue: Spirit, 1 (10 Dec. 1831), first and third unnumbered pages.
3 “The Yellowplush Correspondence” appeared in the Spirit from vin (30 June 1838), 153, intermittently to vin (15 Sept. 1838), 242, and in “Epistles to the Literati,” x (7 March 1840), 2. The work appeared originally in Fraser's from Nov. 1837 to Aug. 1838 with the “Epistles” fragment appearing Jan. 1840.
4 Statements about the content of the Spirit in this article are based on my index of approximately 14,000 items in the journal from 1831 to 1856 (the end of Porter's editorship), including all original and borrowed literary pieces and anecdotes about contemporary authors. For a description of the comic-realistic material from the Old Southwest, see Norris W. Yates, William T. Porter and the Spirit of the Times: A Study of the “Big Bear” School of Humor (Baton Rouge, La., 1957).
5 Spirit, vi, 143. Porter may have found this first item in the London Times; see Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 1 (New York, 1952), 135. This and all succeeding quotations from Dickens will follow the Spirit's text.
6 Spirit, vi (11 Feb. 1837), 410–411. The edition referred to here is almost certainly that of the Philadelphia firm, Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, which appeared in five volumes from Nov. 1836 through Dec. 1837. See David Kaser, Messrs. Carey & Lea of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1957), p. 111.
7 Spirit, vii (3 March 1838), 18. This remark appears in a review of a second Carey, Lea, and Blanchard edition, 1 vol. (1838), illustrated by “Sam Weller, Jr.” (T. H. Onwhyn) and “Alfred Crowquill” (A. H. Forrester). The article also contains what appears to be Porter's first citation of Dickens as the author. A comparison of selections, from June 1836 to March 1838, reveals that the Spirit reprinted less than half of Pickwick.
8 Johnson, I, 149.
9 Spirit, vii, 313–314, and viii (6 Oct. 1838), 265–267.
10 These were a selection from Ch. ix on Fagin's teaching how to pick pockets, Spirit, vii (30 Sept. 1837), 262, no credit given to any source; and “A Scene in a Thieve's [sic] Cellar” (Ch. xvi), Spirit, vii (13 Jan. 1838), 382. Porter's praise appears in a review, Spirit, viii (12 May 1838), 97.
11 Spirit, viii (21 April 1838), 75; (4 Aug. 1838), 195; (18 Aug. 1838), 209–210.
12 “Theatrical Sketch by ‘Boz’,” Spirit, vm (22 Dec. 1838), 355.
13 Spirit, viii (5 Jan. 1839), 369; ix (16 March 1839), 14; announcement of loss of the Pennsylvania, ix (9 March 1839), 1.
14 Review of Nicholas Nickleby (Philadelphia, 1839), Spirit, ix (16 Nov. 1839), 433.
15 Spirit, ix, 589.
16 This hoax has been described by Lawrence H. Houtchens in “The Spirit of the Times and a ‘New Work by Boz’,” PMLA, LXVII (March 1952), 94–100.
17 Spirit, ix (29 Feb. 1840), 613–614.
18 Spirit, x (14 March 1840), 13; quoted from the Notion
19 Quoted in Houtchens, p. 99.
20 Spirit, x (28 March 1840), 37. Houtchens does not cite this item but does mention the Evening Signal's offer to buy Myddleton. Other Dickens items of interest at about this time are a review of Master Humphrey's Clock, with a brief account of Dickens' squabble with Bentley, x (28 March 1840), 37; a review of The Pic Nic Papers, full of praise, xi (23 Oct. 1841), 400; an account of a dinner for Dickens in Edinburgh, xi (31 July 1841), 260–261; and an “Interview with Dickens” from Charles E. Lester, The Glory and Shame of England, 2 vols. (London, 1841), Spirit, xi (4 Dec. 1841) 470.
21 Spirit, xi, 433; letter dated 28 Sept. 1841.
22 “Address to Charles Dickens, Esq.,” Spirit, xi (29 Jan. 1842), 566. Sad to say, this is typical of the verse the Spirit liked to print.
23 Spirit, xi (12 Feb. 1842), 585.
24 Spirit, xii (12 Nov. 1842), 437.
25 Ibid.; Spirit, xii (10 Dec. 1842), 493.
26 Spirit, xii, 437.
27 Ibid.; see Johnson, i, 393.
28 Spirit, xii (26 Nov. 1842), 457.
29 Spirit, xii (3 Dec. 1842), 469; see also xii (28 Jan. 1843), 569.
30 Spirit, xii (10 Dec. 1842), 485.
31 Ibid., p. 492; see also xii (14 Jan. 1843), 543; (18 Feb.1843), 603–604; xiii (4 March 1843), 2–3; (18 March 1843), 27; xiv (24 Feb. 1844), 613.
32 “Omega” was probably John Gormann Barr, who wrote a considerable number of yarns for the Spirit in 1855–57; see W. Stanley Hoole, “John Gormann Barr: Forgotten Alabama Humorist,” Alabama Review, iv (April 1951), 83–116. The other participants in this controversy remain unidentified.
33 Spirit, xii (4 Feb. 1843), 579.
34 Spirit, xiii (15 April 1843), 79.
35 See Spirit, xv (7 Feb. 1846), 596, and xvi (7 March 1846), 24, for hostile reviews. The “Humbug” epithet appears in “To Correspondents,” Spirit, xxii (14 Aug. 1852), 301. Correspondents' questions were not printed; answers were addressed to initials or pseudonyms.
36 For descriptions of the rise of American frontier ma terials in the Spirit during the mid-forties, see Yates, Porter and the Spirit, and Eugene Current-Garcia, “ ‘York's Tall Son’ and His Southern Correspondents,” AQ, vii (Winter 1955), 371–384.
37 “Spiritual Dandyism,” Spirit, xxiii (29 Oct. 1853), 436.
38 Porter and the Spirit, p. 38. For a few examples of Porter's comparisons between American and British writers, see Spirit, x (3 Oct. 1840), 361; Porter, ed., The Big Bear of Arkansas, and Other Sketches (Philadelphia, 1845), passim. (This book is the first anthology of pieces from the journal and contains a number of choice editorial comments on Spirit stories.) Joseph H. Gardner has traced the influence of Dickens on Mark Twain, “Mark Twain and Dickens,” PMLA, LXXXIV (Jan. 1969), 90–101.
39 See Johnson, i, 391.