[DOUGLAS JERROLD, ENGLISH AUTHORS, AUTOGRAPH LETTERS] 

On offer here is a COLLECTION OF 18 ORIGINAL DOUGLAS JERROLD AUTOGRAPH LETTERS. 

This collection of letters came from an old 1930's dealer stock which was then acquired by autograph dealer Doris Harris in the late 1960's. We then acquired it from her back stock when it became available. The old pre-war envelopes which transcribe most if not all of the letters - on the covers of the envelopes -  (see last photo) are included in the auction. 

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Douglas William Jerrold (London 3 January 1803 – 8 June 1857 London) was an English dramatist and writer.

Jerrold's father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby near Cranbrook in Kent. In 1807 Douglas moved to Sheerness, where he spent his childhood. He occasionally took a child part on the stage, but his father's profession held little attraction for him. In December 1813 he joined the guardship Namur, where he had Jane Austen's brother Francis as captain, and served as a midshipman until the peace of 1815. He saw nothing of the war save a number of wounded soldiers from Waterloo, but he retained an affection for the sea.

The peace of 1815 ruined Jerrold's father; on 1 January 1816 he took his family to London, where Douglas began work as a printer's apprentice, and in 1819 he became a compositor in the printing-office of the Sunday Monitor. Several short papers and copies of verses by him had already appeared in the sixpenny magazines, and a criticism of the opera Der Freischütz was admired by the editor, who requested further contributions. Thus Jerrold became a professional journalist.

Jerrold's figure was small and spare, and in later years bowed almost to deformity. His features were strongly marked and expressive, from the thin humorous lips to the keen blue eyes, gleaming from beneath the shaggy eyebrows. He was brisk and active, with the careless bluffness of a sailor. Open and sincere, he concealed neither his anger nor his pleasure; to his sailor's frankness all polite duplicity was distasteful. The cynical side of his nature he kept for his writings; in private life his hand was always open. In politics Jerrold was a Liberal, and he gave eager sympathy to Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Mazzini and Louis Blanc. In social politics especially he took an eager part; he never tired of declaiming against the horrors of war, the luxury of bishops, or the iniquity of capital punishment.

Douglas Jerrold is now perhaps better known from his reputation as a brilliant wit in conversation than from his writings. As a dramatist he was very popular, though his plays have not kept the stage. He dealt with rather humbler forms of social world than had commonly been represented on the boards. He was one of the first and certainly one of the most successful of the men who in defence of the native English drama endeavoured to stem the tide of translation from the French, which threatened early in the 19th century to drown original native talent. His skill in construction and his mastery of epigram and brilliant dialogue are well exemplified in his comedy, Time Works Wonders (Haymarket, 26 April 1845). The tales and sketches which form the bulk of Jerrold's collected works vary much in skill and interest; but, although there are evident traces of their having been composed from week to week, they are always marked by keen satirical observation and pungent wit.

Career as a journalist

Jerrold wrote for numerous periodicals, and gradually became a contributor to the Monthly Magazine, Blackwood's, the New Monthly, and the Athenaeum. To Punch, the publication which of all others is associated with his name, he contributed from its second number in 1841 until within a few days of his death. Punch was a humorous and liberal publication. Jerrold's liberal and radical perspective was portrayed in the magazine under the pseudonym 'Q', which used satire to attack institutions of the day. Punch was also the forum in which he published in the 1840s his comic series Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures, which was later published in book form.

He contributed many articles for Punch under different pseudonyms. On 13 July 1850 he wrote as 'Mrs Amelia Mouser' about the forthcoming Great Exhibition of 1851, coining the phrase the palace of very crystal. From that day forward, the Crystal Palace, at that time still a proposal from his friend Joseph Paxton, gained the name from which it would henceforth be known.

He founded and edited for some time, with indifferent success, the Illuminated Magazine, Jerrold's Shilling Magazine, and Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper; and under his editorship from 1852, Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper rose from almost nonentity to a circulation of 182,000. The history of his later years is little more than a catalogue of his literary productions, interrupted now and again by brief visits to the Continent or to the country. Douglas Jerrold died at his house, Kilburn Priory, in London on 8 June 1857 and was buried at West Norwood Cemetery, where Charles Dickens was a pall-bearer. Dickens gave a public reading and performances of the drama The Frozen Deep to raise money for his widow.

Works

Among the best known of his numerous works are:

Black-Eyed Susan (1829) play / melodrama

The Rent Day (1832) play / melodrama

Men of Character (1838), including "Job Pippin: The man who couldn't help it," and other sketches of the same kind

Cakes and Ale (2 vols., 1842), a collection of short papers and whimsical stories

The Story of a Feather (1844) novel

The Chronicles of Clovernook (1846) novel

A Man made of Money (1849) novel

St Giles and St James (1851) novel

various series of papers reprinted from Punch's Letters to his Son (1843)

Punch's Complete Letter-writer (1845)

the famous Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures (1846).

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