Re: Ideas for your stories

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Fri, 17 Oct 1997 10:25:45 -0100 

My dear Mr Jones,

  It was not John Forster who persuaded me to change the ending of "Great
Expectations," though it might have been.  Bulwer Lytton was in fact the
man.  Speaking as a popular novelist of considerable experience, Lytton put
it to me that my readers would be disappointed by a final parting of Pip and
Estella, never to meet again.  He recommended that I unite them at the end
of the book.  I accepted his advice, but united Pip and Estella more by
implication than declaration, feeling that reticence and caution best
situated their chastened condition.


Faithfully yours,


Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________
>dear mr dickens
>why did john forester have you change the ending on grait exspectasions?
>i would like to no.
>thank you for thothoghs grat stories.
>faitfuly yours charles.
>and prudence.
>
>
>full of the dickens and always smiling
>
>On Thu, 16 Oct 1997, Charles Dickens wrote:
>
>> My dear Mr Jones,
>>
>>   The roots of imagination are buried deep, and not all of them are
>> accessible, even to the author himself.  Miss Havisham grew in part, I think
>> I can say, out of my preoccupation, around 1860, with the effects of
>> brooding upon ancient wrongs, something I had experienced myself, dwelling
>> upon painful episodes in my childhood.  But there was an eternal stimulus
>> too.  Readers of "Household Words," the weekly journal I edited in the
>> 1850s, during the first part of that decade also received a monthly
>> supplement entitled "The Household Narrative of Current Event."  Study that
>> and you will find an account of a poor mad creature who wandered the West
>> End of London at that time, dressed all in white, and believed to have been
>> a wronged bride.  It was impossible for her not to enter my mind, when I was
>> conceiving Miss Havisham.
>>   Estella, as I recall, grew out of no such direct stimulus.  I knew what it
>> was to long for a young woman.  What man doesn't?  And my longing,
>> doubtless, informed the effect she has on Pip.  But I cannot recall, in my
>> own experience, a young woman as cool and self-contained as Estella.  I
>> imagined her because she was what my story needed.
>>
>> Faithfully yours,
>>
>>
>> Charles Dickens
>>
________________________________________________________________________________
>>
>> >Dear Mr Dickens
>> >               I am from a school in Colchester, England.  For GCSE we
are studying Great
>> >Expectations for our novel and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  I would like to
>> >ask you a question,
>> >Where did you get your inspiration for the characters, Miss Havisham and
Miss
>> >Estella.
>> >
>> >Yours Sincerely
>> >Chris Jones
>> >
>> >
>>
>> ======================
>> Charles Dickens
>> charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
>> Author
>>
>
>

======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author