Georgina Hogarth - Later Years

Later Years

On the death of Dickens on June 9, 1870, Georgina Hogarth and Ellen Ternan were at his bedside. In his will Dickens left Hogarth the then huge sum of £8,000, and "...all my private papers whatsoever and wheresoever". Among these papers was the manuscript of The Life of Our Lord, written in 1849 by Dickens exclusively for his children, to whom he read it aloud every Christmas. On her death in 1917 it came into the possession of Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, Dicken's last surviving son.

Using the private letters Dickens left to her in his will, and working with Dickens's eldest daughter, Mary 'Mamie' Dickens, and using Wilkie Collins as an adviser, Hogarth edited three editions of 'The Letters Of Charles Dickens From 1833 To 1870'. This included a two-volume edition published in 1880, with a third volume appearing in 1882, a new and shorter edition in two volumes, also in 1882, and a one-volume edition in 1893. Typically in a family selection, all letters on private family matters were omitted. No mention was made of the money-troubles of John Dickens, Charles's father, the marital troubles of Fred and Augustus Dickens, Dickens's brothers, Dickens's own separation from Catherine or his worries over his sons Alfred Dickens and Edward Dickens. What was unusual, however, was the editors' methods: if cuts were made in one letter leaving passages stranded, these passages were inserted in letters of a later date.

In the Preface Georgina Hogarth and Mary Dickens stated:

"We intend this Collection of Letters to be a Supplement to the "Life of Charles Dickens," by John Forster. That work, perfect and exhaustive as a biography, is only incomplete as regards correspondence; the scheme of the book having made it impossible to include in its space any letters, or hardly any, besides those addressed to Mr. Forster. As no man ever expressed himself more in his letters than Charles Dickens, we believe that in publishing this careful selection from his general correspondence we shall be supplying a want which has been universally felt."

Georgina Hogarth died in 1917 and was buried at the Old Mortlake Burial Ground in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.