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Dickens, Hunt and the Waiter in Somebody's Luggage.

Publisher	Ward Hellstrom
Publication	Victorian Newsletter
Subject	Business
Format	Magazine/Journal
ISSN	0042-5192
Issues per Year	2
Volume	107
Published	2005-03-22

Role	Type	Name
Person	Criticism and interpretation	Charles Dickens
Person	Criticism and interpretation	Leigh Hunt
Author	n/a	Rodney Stenning Edgecombe

In 1850, Leigh Hunt republished many of his London Journal essays (1832) in one volume. While Dickens would almost certainly have read this later collection (which Hunt called The Seer) in the name of friendship, it's possible that he had already encountered "The Waiter" in the earlier forum, and that he remembered it when he came to write his American Notes a decade later. Here Hunt had depicted London waiters as men of few words--so few, indeed, as sometimes to utter nonsensical replies:

   He would drop one of the two syllables of his "Yes, Sir,"
   if he could; but...

[This journal article is 2190 words long]