-49-
The periodical Het Leeskabinet was mainly concerned with the fact that their former editor and publisher
- Hendrik Frijlink - introduced Dickens' work to the Dutch audience, beginning with his own translation
of Nicholas Nickleby, this novel was published in parts in Het Leeskabinet for 1837 and later. Other
works, translated by C.M. Mensing, were published by Frijlink in the 1840s, "zeer tot het genoegen van
ons publiek".20 Until - as Het Leeskabinet tells us - the Vereeniging ter Bevordering van de Belangen
des Boekhandels intervened. The article thus contains interesting information about Dickens in The
Netherlands; unfortunately the period indicated here has to be left out of account.
On the one hand, the many quotations taken from the newspapers and magazines abundantly make clear
that Charles Dickens was a celebrated as well as a respected author in The Netherlands at the time of his
death. On the other hand, they leave room for speculation. For it can be imagined that the enthusiasm with
which various journalists wrote about Dickens incited people who merely knew him by name to begin
reading his books. If there were such data available as the size of the print run and the frequency of
reprints, and if they indicated a marked increase of readers of Dickens' works after 1870, it could be made
plausible that the publicity on the occasion of his death produced this effect.
I decided that the bibliography designed to help me answer the central questions of my subject-matter
would give information on the translator, the publisher, the number of instalments or volumes, price,
edition size, date of publication and the description (format, illustrations etc.) of each separate work
brought out in The Netherlands. To compile this list I used the specifications found in Het Nieuwsblad
voor den Boekhandel as a basis. I already had pages copied from Brinkman 's Catalugns van Boeken
1850-1882, but that was not sufficient. Brinkman's did not say, for instance, at what dates the books or
instalments appeared. Moreover, it was not sure whether Brinkman had really listed all the titles which
came out between 1859 and 1875.
It took quite a number of days to go through the many volumes of Het Nieuwsblad, write down the
information, and to enter it all into the computer. In this way I found all details I wanted, except the
edition size. It has to be remarked that the 'date of publication' of each book or instalment is based on the
date of the issue in which it is mentioned under "jongst verschenen boeken". It is as close as I could come
to the actual date of appearance. Another point I have to mention is that the name of the translator was not
always recorded under a title. Often these names were easy to retrieve -by looking up the publications
concerned in the online catalogue, for instance; at other times it turned out that the translator simply was
anonymous, as his or her name was not even mentioned on the title page of the copy I looked into. This
was the case with Olivier Twist, for example.
The data found in Het Nieuwsblad was sometimes puzzling; then it looked as if gaps had fallen in the
information. For example, The Nieuwsblad issue of April 4, 1861, mentions the publication of the first
instalment of Groote Verwachtingen: een verhaal, published by J.C.Gaade from Culemborg, translated by
C.M. Mensing, format gr 8o, price per volume ƒ0,50, the whole to be completed in 12 to 14 instalments.
The next issue which mentioned this title is that of 20 March 1862; translated by the same person, having
the same format, and costing the same per volume instalment). Only this time the publisher turned out
to be P.N. van Kampen from Amsterdam, who brought out the instalments 12 to 14. It seems as if P.N.
van Kampen had taken over the publication from J.C. Gaade halfway, but any data on the 10 instalments
which must have appeared in between the two dates mentioned cannot be found. So it is difficult to know
whether we are dealing with one or two editions in this case.
After I had documented and copied out the data found in Het Nieuwsblad I began to look for additional
information in the KVB afdeling /zaal boekhandel in the Bibliotheek van de UvA. My primary concern
was to find figures on the edition size printed of each publication in the list. Besides, there was a good
chance that I would encounter special or extra editions which were not mentioned in Het Nieuwsblad, or
20 "Bij het graf van Charles Dickens", Het Leeskabinet, III, 1870, p. 161.
