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Fri, 5 Jan 1996 22:18:53 -0500
c/o The Chatback Trust
43 Bath Street
Royal Leamington Spa
Warwickshire CV31 3AG
Internet: chatback@rmplc.co.uk
Dear Friends,
I am sensible of the honour done to me by Mr Holloway
and his esteemed colleagues in offering me this remarkable
literary endeavour. I have long believed that the
education of the young is one of the most hallowed tasks
that a person may be called upon to carry out, and to have
the opportunity to use such an innovative and entirely
mysterious mode of communication, by which my words are
whisk'd hither and yon by the modern miracle of
electricity, makes the duty doubly pleasurable.
I can forsee some slight difficulties occasioned by a
natural tendency in people to require explanations,
(indeed, one might suggest that such a tendency is a
prerequisite of learning). I refer to the fact that,
having been born in Portsmouth in England in the year of
our Lord 1812, my age is such as to occasion a measure of
disbelief in my existence. Dearest children, seize that
disbelief and hold it in suspension! Do not discard it,
for in an age in which every huckster may peddle his wares
by newspaper and television, a healthy sense of disbelief
may be your only guard against deception on a grand scale.
But do, I beg you, suspend your disbelief in my
existence, since without you, my readers, I would become
nothing but that object of veneration mixt with tedium, a
'Dead Author'.
Welcome then, to Victorian Lives and Letters. Let
learning commence!
Your most obedient servant
Charles Dickens