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Our Mutual Friend Reference library
Paul Schlicke
Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens
... Contract, Text, and Publication History On 8 September 1863 Dickens wrote to Chapman and Hall offering them half of the copyright during serial publication of Our Mutual Friend for £6,000, and the contract was signed on 21 November (Pilgrim 10.477–8). There was a clause which entitled the publisher to cancel the agreement if publication had not begun by the end of 1864 , and to claim compensation should Dickens die before completing the work. Robert Patten notes that the contract gave Dickens ‘unprecedented’ control: ‘Chapman risked the whole...

publishing, printing, bookselling: modes of production Reference library
Robert Patten
Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens
...to his previous novel and the furore over American Notes and International Copyright, and the new work started out unpromisingly. Whatever caused the slump, the poor sales meant that Dickens's serial was not earning enough to repay the loan. William Hall suggested invoking a clause in Dickens's agreement whereby £50 out of his contractual £200 monthly stipend for writing Chuzzlewit would be withheld and applied against the balance owing. Furious, and undoubtedly anxious about whether his profitability would be permanently impaired, Dickens determined to...
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