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Founded in London in 1902, the Dickens Fellowship has become a worldwide organisation which includes branches in Japan, Denmark and India. The Melbourne and Christchurch branches began in 1904 and 1931 respectively. The Fellowship publishes its own journal, The Dickensian, and the 106th Annual Conference of the International Dickens Fellowship was held in Portsmouth, England in August of this year. Dickens’s works are still well-loved; his legacy lives on.

[Cover of Dickens Down Under. The occasional newsletter of the Christchurch Dickens Fellowship. Issue 92, May 2012. Edited by Jeni Curtis and Esme Richards. Kindly supplied by Esme Richards.]

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Founded in London in 1902, the Dickens Fellowship has become a worldwide organisation which includes branches in Japan, Denmark and India. The Melbourne and Christchurch branches began in 1904 and 1931 respectively. The Fellowship publishes its own journal, The Dickensian, and the 106th Annual Conference of the International Dickens Fellowship was held in Portsmouth, England in August of this year. Dickens’s works are still well-loved; his legacy lives on.

[Cover of the Christchurch Dickens Fellowship: The Bi-Centenary Luncheon. Charles Dickens: Celebrating 200 Years, 1812-2012. Kindly supplied by Esme Richards, Christchurch.]

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Founded in London in 1902, the Dickens Fellowship has become a worldwide organisation which includes branches in Japan, Denmark and India. The Melbourne and Christchurch branches began in 1904 and 1931 respectively. The Fellowship publishes its own journal, The Dickensian, and the 106th Annual Conference of the International Dickens Fellowship was held in Portsmouth, England in August of this year. Dickens’s works are still well-loved; his legacy lives on.

[Cover of The Christchurch Dickens Fellowship 2012-2013 Syllabus. Kindly supplied by Esme Richards, Christchurch. ]

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Founded in London in 1902, the Dickens Fellowship has become a worldwide organisation which includes branches in Japan, Denmark and India. The Melbourne and Christchurch branches began in 1904 and 1931 respectively. The Fellowship publishes its own journal, The Dickensian, and the 106th Annual Conference of the International Dickens Fellowship was held in Portsmouth, England in August of this year. Dickens’s works are still well-loved; his legacy lives on.

[Cover of The Dickens Newsletter, Melbourne. Issue number 326, February 2012. 200th Birthday Issue. Kindly supplied by Lucy Neales, Melbourne.]

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Founded in London in 1902, the Dickens Fellowship has become a worldwide organisation which includes branches in Japan, Denmark and India. The Melbourne and Christchurch branches began in 1904 and 1931 respectively. The Fellowship publishes its own journal, The Dickensian, and the 106th Annual Conference of the International Dickens Fellowship was held in Portsmouth, England in August of this year. Dickens’s works are still well-loved; his legacy lives on.

[Cover of The Dickens Newsletter from the Dickens Fellowship Melbourne. Issue number 327, March 2012, kindly supplied by Lucy Neales, Melbourne. ]

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There has been an enormous amount of scholarship regarding Dickens and his works since his death in 1870. Founded in 1970 on the 100th anniversary of his death, the Dickens Studies Annual is an important vehicle for articles and reviews about this celebrated nineteenth-century writer. Leslie Simon’s ‘Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, and the Aesthetics of Dust’ is one recent article. Occasional pieces on other nineteenth-century authors also feature.

[Cover of Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction, Volume 42. ]

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By her unceasing care of the wounded and sick in the English camps at Crimea, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) became known as the ‘Lady of the Lamp’. Back in England, she published her reform measures in Notes on Hospitals (1859) and Notes on Nursing (1859), and in 1860 established a school for nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. With her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, Nightingale endeavoured to improve the social and economic situation of those less fortunate in Britain. She knew Dickens, and distributed his books to nurses and soldiers. She also worked with him on the Committee of the Association for Improving Workhouse Infirmaries.

[Copy of a painting of Florence Nightingale, ‘The Lady of the Lamp’.]

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Charles Dickens was the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth Dickens, née Barrow. Financial mismanagement resulted in John being imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison. One consequence of this was that the twelve-year old Dickens was taken out of school and made to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he spent ten hours a day, Monday through Saturday, pasting labels onto pots of blacking. This experience haunted Dickens for years, and many of his novels like Dombey and Son and David Copperfield reflect his concern for destitute children, orphans and abandonment. Here he is in happier times, with a portrait painted by E. Lawn, circa 1870. The usual flourish that ended most of Dickens’s letters is depicted opposite.

[Portrait of Charles Dickens by E. Lawn from Charles Dickens Papers 1845-1881.]

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]]> Angela Burdett Coutts (1814-1906), a philanthropic millionairess, became friends with Dickens about 1840. He undertook research for Coutts and began advising her on various charities in which she was interested. In the letter displayed, Dickens recounts his visit to a Ragged School in Saffron Hill, a notorious slum area of London and home to the fictional Fagin. Ragged Schools were set up in an attempt to bring education to the street children of London while also providing them with some food and clothing. Dickens praised the efforts of the teachers but was shocked by the parlous state of the children and advised Coutts that the school was ‘an experiment most worthy of [her] charitable hand’. Dickens and Coutts went on to other charity projects and set up Urania Cottage, a ‘Home for Fallen Women’, in May 1847.

[Page 50 and 51 from Letters from Charles Dickens to Angela Burdett-Coutts 1841-1865. Selected by Edgar Johnson.]

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Taken by John Thomson, a Scottish photographer, in 1877, the image on the left is titled ‘The Crawler’. ‘Crawlers’ were typically people so poverty-stricken that they didn’t even have the energy to beg. The destitute woman depicted is minding the baby of a friend with the hope of receiving a cup of tea and a piece of bread as payment, possibly the only nourishment she would have had all day. Although Thomson’s photograph is staged, the image is heart-breaking and there is no denying the desperation of the woman’s situation. The bedraggled group of boys on the right are awaiting admission to Dr Barnardo’s Home in about 1880. The lucky ones? Maybe.

[Photographs from Victorian Life in PhotographsThe Crawler (left) and Barnado's Boys (right).]

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Another well-attended occasion was the Great Exhibition, which took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. During that time 6 million people visited the ‘Crystal Palace’, designed by Joseph Paxton. Somewhat reluctantly Dickens dragged himself along and while acknowledging the progress that the exhibits on display represented, he thought it a muddle and a major distraction from very real social problems. At the time he was disgruntled: London was ‘a vile place’; his father had died; Robert Peel had died unexpectedly, as did his own infant daughter Dora. And perhaps subconsciously he may have harboured feelings against his old fantastical rival, ‘sassage’ Albert, Victoria’s husband, to whom the triumph of the Exhibition largely belonged. The endpaper depicts the extent of the building; the catalogue is jammed full of choice exhibits.

[A piece of SILK, contributed by...will be found in the Exhibition...Page 100 from The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue: The Industry of All Nations.]

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]]> Another well-attended occasion was the Great Exhibition, which took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851. During that time 6 million people visited the ‘Crystal Palace’, designed by Joseph Paxton. Somewhat reluctantly Dickens dragged himself along and while acknowledging the progress that the exhibits on display represented, he thought it a muddle and a major distraction from very real social problems. At the time he was disgruntled: London was ‘a vile place’; his father had died; Robert Peel had died unexpectedly, as did his own infant daughter Dora. And perhaps subconsciously he may have harboured feelings against his old fantastical rival, ‘sassage’ Albert, Victoria’s husband, to whom the triumph of the Exhibition largely belonged. The endpaper depicts the extent of the building; the catalogue is jammed full of choice exhibits.

[The VASE beneath, and the FAN-LIGHT...they exhibit several other excellent productions...Page 101 from The Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue: The Industry of All Nations.]

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]]> Dickens began his career as a professional reader in 1858, after many private readings to family, friends, and charity groups. For each performance he condensed the text, with ‘The Trial from Pickwick’ being the most popular at 164 readings; ‘A Christmas Carol’ was performed 127 times. And much like Miriam Margolyes’s ‘Dickens’s Women’, his was a one-person show, where he played different characters in different voices. Some scholars have suggested that the strain of these performances hastened his death.

[Copy of an engraving of Charles Dickens at his reading desk for his final performance on 15 March 1870. ]

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Venue: Manchester Free Trade Hall; dates: 21, 22, and 24 August 1857; protagonists - Nelly (18); Charles (45). ‘Nelly’ was the actress Ellen Lawless Ternan (1839–1914), who became Dickens’s love interest after he saw her perform on stage in the Wilkie Collins play The Frozen Deep. Conscious of public opinion, their relationship was known to only a few friends. Dickens discretely supported Ternan, and she occasionally accompanied him on his travels. In 1876, after Dickens’s death, she married George Wharton Robinson, a clergyman twelve years her junior. On display is a photograph copy of Ternan, c.1875, as well as a reprint of Dickens’s Will where he leaves her ‘£1000 free of legacy duty’.

[Photograph of Ellen Ternan, c. 1875.]

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Langley and Belch published their London map in 1812, the year of Dickens’s birth. The City of London is highlighted in pink, and placed around the outer frame are vignettes that feature well-known London landmarks.

[Langley and Belch’s New Map of London (facsimile).]

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Angela Burdett Coutts (1814-1906), a philanthropic millionairess, became friends with Dickens about 1840. He undertook research for Coutts and began advising her on various charities in which she was interested. In the letter displayed, Dickens recounts his visit to a Ragged School in Saffron Hill, a notorious slum area of London and home to the fictional Fagin. Ragged Schools were set up in an attempt to bring education to the street children of London while also providing them with some food and clothing. Dickens praised the efforts of the teachers but was shocked by the parlous state of the children and advised Coutts that the school was ‘an experiment most worthy of [her] charitable hand’. Dickens and Coutts went on to other charity projects and set up Urania Cottage, a ‘Home for Fallen Women’, in May 1847.

[Copy of photograph of Angela Burdett Coutts. ]

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]]> Despite her mother’s disapproval of novels, Queen Victoria read Oliver Twist and found it so ‘excessively interesting’ that she pressed it on the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who responded with: ‘It’s all among Workhouses, and Coffin Makers, and Pickpockets…I don’t like that low debasing style’. In 1840 Victoria married Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Dickens created a love fantasy over her, getting back privately at Albert by calling him a ‘German sassage [sausage]’ from ‘Saxe Humbug and Go-to-her’. On 9 March 1870, an ailing Dickens finally had a 90 minute audience with the Queen, who thanked him for the loan of some Civil War photographs, and discussed household matters such as ‘the cost of butchers’ meat, and bread’. Victoria found Dickens ‘very agreeable, with a pleasant voice and manner.’

[Page 4 and 5 from The Illustrated London News Record of the Glorious Reign of Queen Victoria.]

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