Charles Dickens’ letter up for sale

A Christmas Day letter written by Charles Dickens is up for sale at an Amherst, N.H., auction house.

But the Dec. 25, 1849, letter penned by the author of “A Christmas Carol” and other classics contains a good deal more “bah humbug” than Christmas cheer.

In the letter to William Jerdan, Dickens blasts the British journalist for reprinting a bogus biography of him in the Literary Journal. The biography, which originally appeared in the New York Herald, was written by Thomas Powell, a known forger and embezzler who once worked for one of Dickens’ friends.

“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,” Dickens wrote. “As you reprint the extraordinary lies of the New York Herald, perhaps you may like to know something more of their authority. I therefore send you for your own perusal (for I must not anticipate the defense to the ingenious Mr. Powell’s American actions for libel) a few small passages in the life of the distinguished ‘literary gentleman from England,’ who is in question.”

Powell, who escaped prison in England by pleading insanity and being committed to an insane asylum, fled to New York after serving his sentence. Once there, he traded on the names of literary figures he had known in England, including Dickens. In his biography of Dickens, he wrote that the two had quarreled over losses both had incurred from railway speculation.