Carte-de-visite photograph with Autograph Letter signed.

A fine image of the author, seated, leaning his head against his left hand, his elbow resting on an ornate table, as he reads a book. The letter invites Webster to a dinner engagement: “Will you come and dine here next Sunday week – there’s good long notice for you, with no company, at 6 sharp.” The recipient was almost certainly the actor and theatre manager Benjamin Webster (1798–1882), an old friend of Dickens (though they had become temporarily estranged in 1859 over claims that a play in which Webster had acted was plagiarized from A Tale of Two Cities).Both image and text capture Dickens at the start of the final stave of his life. His marriage to Catherine ended, his angry change of publishers behind him, he embarks on his final, greatest works. Serialization of Great Expectations was underway at the time he writes this letter.

Carte-de-visite photograph, signed “Charles Dickens” with flourish underline, by Mason & Co., London; framed with ALs to Webster, letterhead 3 Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, 15 February 1861. 10 × 6 cm, including mount. Framed.