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[From a photograph by Giacomo Brogi.] and older readers-among them a book of child verses by Miss Helen Hay, illustrated in color by Mr. Frank Ver Beck-Mr. Russell announces a fine edition of "L'Aiglon," in which Miss Maude Adams is billed to play, this autumn; an edition of the "Knickerbocker History of New York," handsomely printed and illustrated with eight large drawings by Maxfield Parrish; a series of drawings by William Nicholson, called "Characters of Romance," in which Mr. Nicholson has outdone his own excellence; Pinero's "Gay Lord Quex," and a long list of attractive books of minor importance.

Mr. Alleyne Ireland, the author of "The Anglo-Boer Conflict," was born at Manchester, England, and educated abroad.

He has lived for some time in this country and for the past thirteen years has devoted himself to the study of

the colonization of the tropics by white. races. In addition to the study of the political, historical and economic aspects of his subject, Mr. Ireland made a thorough investigation of labor conditions in the tropics. While engaged in this part of his work he accepted the position of overseer on several sugar estates in the West Indies and in South America. The result of these investigations has been outlined in two books, "Demerariana Essays, Historical, Critical and Descriptive," and "Tropical Colonization;" and in a number of addresses and magazine articles.

The work on which he is now engaged and which will appear in November, is entitled "China and the Powers; a Brief History of Chinese Intercourse with the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, Germany and Japan." Mr. Ireland's object in writing this book is to place within handy compass the leading facts of Chinese foreign relations, from

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This portrait of the author of "Paul Jones: Founder of the American Navy," the new historical biography of the famous patriot, privateer or pirate, as he is variously regarded by prejudiced and unprejudiced minds, is made from a recent photograph. Mr. Buell is a ship-builder associated with the great business of the Cramps, in Philadelphia, who has found interest and relaxation for years the study of Paul Jones's career. A few years ago he went to Russia on business for his firm, and while there came across a great quantity of entirely new material regarding Paul Jones and his connection

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with the Russian navy. This he has made good use of in the preparation of the "Life" which the Scribner's have just published in two handsome volumes.

The illustrated chronicle of "Lord Leighton, P. R. A.," by Ernest Rhys, just published by the Macmillan Company, affords a very complete survey of the famous academician's life and work, and contains two photogravures and about eighty half tone reproductions of his pictures. Another notable book issued by the same firm is "Roman Art; Some of its Principles and their Application to Early Christian Painting," by Franz Wickhoff. It is illustrated with fourteen plates and eighty half tone reproductions in the text. "Fra Angelico and his Art," by Langton Douglas with sixty-four illustrations, among which are some fine photogravures, is still another book of note from the same publishers.

Mr. Oliver Herford has had a prolonged interval of industry this autumn, and part of the fruits thereof are to be seen in two of the season's new books. "Overheard in a Garden," is the title of a collection of his verses and pictures which the Scribners are to bring out very soon. It will include many rhymes and drawings not previously published, and will be a rival to that much admired brochure "The Bashful Earthquake, and Other Poems," which was successful from its day of publication, last year. Moreover, Mr. Herford has done some thoroughly delightful work in illustrating a new fairy book by Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, "The Dream Fox Story Book," which the Macmillans have in press. Mrs. Wright's story is as charming as her earlier books, and Mr. Herford has contributed more than eighty capital pictures.

The Rambler.

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VIEW OF THE STRAND, SHOWING (ON THE LEFT) THE OFFICE OF THE OLD Morning Chronicle, WHERE DICKENS WAS EMPLOYED FROM 1835 TO 1836, AND THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY IN WHICH HIS PARENTS WERE MARRIED

[From a photograph by Lionel Gowing.]

"To the wholesome training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very young man, I constantly refer my first successes."-DICKENS, Speech to New York Editors.

THE

THE WRITING OF PICKWICK

HE twenty-one months over which the writing of the "Pickwick Papers" extended were, undoubtedly, the most interesting and the most important in the life of Charles Dickens. They included his happiest and his most distressful days; they knew his frankest and most natural manner. They saw the rise of his fame, before the world had hailed him as the most popular novelist of the age, before the burden of a great reputation and the cares of a large family had worn their lines upon his character. They saw his marriage, the birth of his eldest child, the beginning of his life-long friendship with Forster and the growth of his affection

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for the child sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, who was so soon to be snatched away. They found him an almost unknown youth with a youth's boundless prospect of happiness. They left him a famous man with an outlook obscured by the gloom of a great sorrow.

The story of the origin of the "Pickwick Papers "-how it was proposed that Seymour, the artist, should draw a series of sketches illustrating the adventures of a sporting club, and that Messrs. Chapman & Hall, the publishers, should find some one to write a story to fit them; how they found young Dickens; how young Dickens pointed out that the plan put the cart

before the horse, and that the work would be in every way more satisfactory if the sketches illustrated the text instead of the text illustrating the sketches; how his views were accepted; how he "thought of Mr. Pickwick," and how poor Seymour killed himself before the second number was published-all this has been told by the author of the "Pickwick Papers" in his preface to the first cheap edition of the book. It is not necessary to repeat it here in detail, but before turning to Dickens's life during the writing of the story, it may be interesting to glance in fancy over the shoulder of Mr. William Hall, of the firm of Chapman & Hall, as he waits upon Dickens with the first suggestion of the work, and see what manner of man is this young author who has the assurance to argue with a publisher. The date is December, 1835, or January, 1836. Dickens has not quite completed his twenty-fourth year, but for nine years he has been earning wages, first as office boy to a firm of solicitors at thirteen shillings and sixpence a week, then as shorthand writer to the proctors of Doctors' Commons, and lastly as a newspaper reporter, parliamentary and descriptive. He is now a valued member of the staff of the Morning Chronicle, a newspaper published at 332, Strand, within a stone's throw of the church of St. Mary, where his father and mother were married in 1809. In the service of his paper he has seen as much of England as any man of his years, for he has traveled North, East, South and West, and (to quote his own words) has been "upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country." A year ago his weekly salary was raised from five to seven guineas in consideration of his contributing a second series of the popu

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*For a full explanation of the now extinct profession of proctor, see "David Copperfield," Chapter XXIII.

+Now the office of the Weekly Despatch. The front of the building above the first floor is unaltered to this day.

lar "Sketches by Boz" to the Evening Chronicle, a new venture edited by Mr. George Hogarth, to whose eldest daughter, Catherine, he is about to be married. Two years have passed since the first of the first series of his "Sketches" appeared in the Monthly Magazine, and in the man who now stands before him he recognizes the publisher at whose hands he then bought-in a shop at the corner of Arundel Street, Strand, on the site now covered by the premises of Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son, news agents-the precious periodical which contained his first printed contribution to imaginative literature. He has just sold for £150 the copyright of the first series of the "Sketches," and has prepared them for publication in two volumes, which are destined to find for a season a wider popularity than the early numbers of the "Pickwick Papers." He is an able young man, well satisfied with what he has done, and conscious of the power to do greater things yet, but there is no trace of affectation or conceit in the handsome face which greets the visitor. "It has the life and soul in it," wrote Leigh Hunt, "of fifty human beings." "As if made of steel," said Jane Welch Carlyle, thus suggesting in a word the diverse capabilities of flashing brightness and cool reflection, of flexibility and strength which go to make a character that is both vigorous and engaging.

I have said that the date of Mr. Hall's visit to Dickens's rooms in Furnival's Inn was either December, 1835, or January, 1836. If in December, the interview probably took place in the chambers at No. 13, which Dickens occupied for twelve months; but it is more likely that the date was January or perhaps February, 1836, when he had moved from No. 13, to the top floor of No. 15, having taken the new and larger rooms, no doubt, in view of his approaching marriage, from Christmas, 1835, " for three years certain"

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