DICKENS, Charles. Autograph letter signed to Francis Alexander, Devonshire Terrace, 3 [erroneously dated 2nd] December 1841, accepting Alexander's proposal that he should sit for a portrait on arriving in Boston where his stay 'will be but a short one as I am going on into the South', and enthusiastically anticipating his first visit to America, 'Trust me, that my heart warms towards the land, and that for every hearty feeling I have as hearty a response'; Dickens also refers to a clock, apparently of interest to them both; one page, 4to, integral leaf removed. Provenance: Comte Alain de Suzannet; his posthumous sale at Sotheby's, 23 November 1971, lot 217.

DICKENS, Charles. Autograph letter signed to Francis Alexander, Devonshire Terrace, 3 [erroneously dated 2nd] December 1841, accepting Alexander's proposal that he should sit for a portrait on arriving in Boston where his stay 'will be but a short one as I am going on into the South', and enthusiastically anticipating his first visit to America, 'Trust me, that my heart warms towards the land, and that for every hearty feeling I have as hearty a response'; Dickens also refers to a clock, apparently of interest to them both; one page, 4to, integral leaf removed. Provenance: Comte Alain de Suzannet; his posthumous sale at Sotheby's, 23 November 1971, lot 217.

'MY HEART WARMS TOWARDS THE LAND': Dickens arrived in America with his wife in January 1842. Francis Alexander (1800-1880) was a successful portrait painter in New York and Boston whose portrait of Dickens hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.