Dickens & Ellen Ternan


Creator

Date

1952

Identifier

Storage PR 4582 NP94

Publisher

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press

Abstract

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’.

[Page 68-69 from Ada Nisbet's Dickens & Ellen Ternan.]

Files

Cabinet 2 Dickens and Ternan.jpg

Citation

Ada Nisbet, “Dickens & Ellen Ternan,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed March 29, 2024, https://ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/7120.