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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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]]> 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.

[Letter written by Charles Dickens in Charles Dickens Papers 1845-1881.]

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Charles Dickens]]>


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By February 1838, Charles Dickens had begun Nicholas Nickleby, his third novel. Published serially between April 1838 and October 1839, he was paid £150 per number, with a bonus offered of £1500 on completion. The soon-to-be-more-famous Hablot Knight Browne (‘Phiz’) illustrated the novel. There was fieldwork involved. In 1838, both men travelled to Yorkshire to look at schools; Dotheboys Hall was the reconstituted literary result. This first book edition also contains Daniel Maclise’s engraved portrait of Dickens as well as coloured plates by ‘Peter Palette’, a pseudonym for Thomas Onwhyn, a later Punch illustrator.

[The internal economy of Dotheboys Hall. An illustration by Hablot Knight Browne in Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.]

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The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Household Edition).]]> Charles Dickens]]>

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William Makepeace Thackeray was not only a major Victorian writer who created works such as Vanity Fair, but he was also an accomplished artist. Indeed, after the suicide of Robert Seymour, Dickens’s first illustrator, Thackeray applied to illustrate Pickwick Papers. He was unsuccessful in this. Initially good friends, Dickens and he had a falling out: the so-called Garrick Club Affair of 1858, which was started by one Edmund Yates. Fortunately, there was reconciliation before Thackeray’s death in December 1863. On display are Dickens’s eulogy of Thackeray in The Cornhill Magazine, and the first serial instalment of Thackeray’s London novel The History of Pendennis.

[Cover of number 1, the November issue, 1848 of William Makepeace Thackeray's The History of Pendennis.]

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William Makepeace Thackeray]]>



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William Makepeace Thackeray was not only a major Victorian writer who created works such as Vanity Fair, but he was also an accomplished artist. Indeed, after the suicide of Robert Seymour, Dickens’s first illustrator, Thackeray applied to illustrate Pickwick Papers. He was unsuccessful in this. Initially good friends, Dickens and he had a falling out: the so-called Garrick Club Affair of 1858, which was started by one Edmund Yates. Fortunately, there was reconciliation before Thackeray’s death in December 1863. On display are Dickens’s eulogy of Thackeray in The Cornhill Magazine, and the first serial instalment of Thackeray’s London novel The History of Pendennis.

[Page 129 from The Cornhill Magazine, Volume IX, February, 1864. In Memoriam by Charles Dickens.]

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]]> The Life of Charles Dickens.]]> John Forster]]>

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Dickens first met Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), author of Woman in White, in 1851. They became fast friends, collaborating in many projects. Indeed, so close was their relationship, that it has been claimed that Collins was the ‘Dickensian Ampersand’ (Philip V. Allingham, Victorian Web). The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices was one such project, where Collins assumed the identity of Thomas Idle (a born-and-bred idler) and Dickens that of Francis Goodchild (laboriously idle). Originally published in Household Words (October-November 1857), it finally appeared in book form in 1890.

[Illustration, The Ghost's Narrative, by Arthur Layard, opposite page 72 in Charles Dickens's and Wilkie Collins's The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices; No Thoroughfare; The Perils of Certain English Prisoners.]

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Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins]]>




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When Dickens and Thomas Carlyle met in 1840, it was the beginning of a life-long friendship. The gruff Scot held a contrary opinion on Dickens, the so-called ‘entertainer’: ‘Dickens had not written anything which would be found of much use in solving the problems of life.’ After Dickens’s death, Carlyle proclaimed: ‘the good, the gentle, ever noble Dickens, - every inch of him an Honest Man!’ Dickens claimed to have read the essayist’s The French Revolution 500 times, and used it as a basis for his own A Tale of Two Cities. This copy was once Truby King’s and is annotated by him.

[Page 304-305 from Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1831); Lectures on Heroes (1840).]

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Thomas Carlyle]]>
]]> When touring America in 1842, Dickens met Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was Longfellow who thought the creator of Oliver and Nicholas Nickleby had ‘a slight dash of the Dick Swiveller about him’. Their trans-Atlantic friendship continued, and when Longfellow visited London in 1843, Dickens took him on a night tour of the slums. While staying with Dickens, Longfellow (to George Slater) captured an evocative moment at Devonshire Terrace: ‘I write this from Dickens’s study… The raven croaks in the garden; and the ceaseless roar of London fills my ears.’ Here is Longfellow’s well known Song of Hiawatha.

[Page 202 and 203, The Song of Hiawatha, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Poetical Works. ]

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]]>




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John Forster (1812-1876), was Dickens’s closest friend. He read proofs of many of Dickens’s works, advised him on financial and personal matters, and became Dickens’s literary executor. Known also as ‘Fuz’ or ‘Beadle of the Universe’, Forster was Dickens’s Boswell, producing the first biography, Life of Charles Dickens in 1872. Despite Forster’s suppression of facts about Dickens’s relationship with Ellen Ternan, the book was a great success. This plate by Daniel Maclise in this copy of Forster’s biography portrays Dickens reading The Chimes to his friends in John Forster’s chambers in 1844. Dickens was introduced to Forster by the novelist William H. Ainsworth.

[At 58, Lincolns Inn Fields, Monday the 2nd of December 1844 by Daniel Maclise, opposite page 242 in John Forster's The Life of Charles Dickens.]

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John Forster]]>

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What shall we have for dinner? Satisfactorily answered by numerous bills of fare for from two to eighteen persons (1851), a cookbook that was very popular, going through several editions.]]> Daniel Maclise]]>



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Catherine Dickens (1815-1879), née Hogarth, married Dickens on 2 April 1836. They set up home at 48 Doughty Street (now the Charles Dickens Museum, London) and had ten children. In May 1858, they separated after Catherine discovered Dickens’s infidelities with actress Ellen Ternan. In 1879, just before she died, Catherine gifted letters from Dickens with the note to her daughter Kate: ‘Give these to the British Museum, that the world may know he loved me once’. Catherine was also an author. In 1851, she published under the name ‘Lady Maria Clutterbuck’, What shall we have for dinner? Satisfactorily answered by numerous bills of fare for from two to eighteen persons (1851), a cookbook that was very popular, going through several editions.

[Page 46-47 from a facsimile of Lady Maria Clutterbuck's What shall we have for Dinner? Satisfactorily answered by numerous bills of fare for from two to eighteen persons.]

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Lady Maria Clutterbuck (pseudonym for Catherine Thomson Dickens)]]>

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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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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.]

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This delightful sketch of (right to left) Dickens, his wife Catherine, and sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth was executed by Dickens’s friend Daniel Maclise. Catherine became Dickens’s wife, and Georgina became Dickens’s household organiser, and sided with him during the separation scandal. One Hogarth is missing: Mary, who moved into Dickens’s household in 1836. A year later, this ‘young, beautiful and good’ girl died in Dickens’s arms. Many scholars have suggested that Mary was the model for Little Nell, in The Old Curiosity Shop.

[Copy of original from Forster Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.]

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While submitting contributions to the Monthly Magazine, Dickens formed his pen-name – ‘Boz’. He juggled parliamentary reporting (he was adept at shorthand) with creative writing, submitting additional ‘sketches’ to the Evening Chronicle, edited by his future father-in-law George Hogarth. Dickens was an excellent observer, and his Sketches by Boz include memorable descriptions of people and places, especially of London. ‘Thoughts about People’ is but one, ably illustrated by George Cruikshank, the ‘modern Hogarth’, who was equally secretive about his personal life (unbeknown to all, he had a mistress by whom he fathered 11 illegitimate children).

[Thoughts about People. Illustration by George Cruikshank, opposite page 90 from Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People.]

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In December 1833 Dickens’s first published literary work appeared in the Monthly Magazine; it was entitled ‘A Dinner at Poplar Walk’ (later called ‘Mr Minns and his Cousin’). His first book was Sketches by Boz, and it contained sketches and tales written during 1833 and 1836, including the above ‘Mr Minns’. On display is the Second Series edition, which contained stories not in the First Series of February 1836. Published by John Macrone, the two volume set was illustrated by George Cruikshank, who, along with Dickens, is depicted as a flag waver in this engraved title page. In 1834, Dickens was 22 and a little known Parliamentary reporter; by 1837 he was famous. Sketches by Boz, well-received on publication, did much to establish his reputation.

[Vauxhall Gardens by Day (left) and Sketches by Boz- Second Series (right). Illustrated frontispiece and title page by George Cruikshank, from Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. Second Series.]

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In early March 1836, Dickens signed a contract with the fledging firm of Chapman and Hall, who gambled on serial publication of Pickwick Papers, Dickens’s first novel. He was to receive £14 for each 12,000-word instalment. Only 1,000 of the first number were printed; by late November 1837, 40,000 copies were being sold. The appearance of Sam Weller clinched Dickens’s reputation, and Pickwick Papers was a runaway bestseller. This first book edition of the twenty instalments contains illustrations by Robert Seymour, who completed them up to the second number; R. W. Buss, who was an interim illustrator; and then 20 year old Hablot Browne, who would become Dickens’s most consistent artistic collaborator.

[Title page of Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. 1st bound edition.]

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In early March 1836, Dickens signed a contract with the fledging firm of Chapman and Hall, who gambled on serial publication of Pickwick Papers, Dickens’s first novel. He was to receive £14 for each 12,000-word instalment. Only 1,000 of the first number were printed; by late November 1837, 40,000 copies were being sold. The appearance of Sam Weller clinched Dickens’s reputation, and Pickwick Papers was a runaway bestseller. This first book edition of the twenty instalments contains illustrations by Robert Seymour, who completed them up to the second number; R. W. Buss, who was an interim illustrator; and then 20 year old Hablot Browne, who would become Dickens’s most consistent artistic collaborator.

[Title page and frontispiece from Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. 1st bound edition. Illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz).]

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In 1812, London’s population was over a million, and by 1880 it had reached 4.5 million. Dickens knew the City well and as he walked it, he observed the sights and sounds and smells of this bustling metropolis: rich and poor, Cockney hawkers and vagabonds, the railway, immigrants (Chinese, Irish, Russians), the over-crowded docks, the fog-bound Thames, sooty, stinking pathways, the new and innovative, and so much more. And importantly, he wrote about it. In truth, ‘London created Dickens, just as Dickens created London’ (Ackroyd). The Fagin-like clothes-seller is from Andrew White Tuer’s Old London Street Cries and the Cries of To-day (1885).

[II. Holborn, Fleet Street, Strand, fold-out map from Karl Baedeker's London and Its Environs: Handbook for Travellers. 7th rev. edition.]

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Karl Baedeker]]>

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In 1812, London’s population was over a million, and by 1880 it had reached 4.5 million. Dickens knew the City well and as he walked it, he observed the sights and sounds and smells of this bustling metropolis: rich and poor, Cockney hawkers and vagabonds, the railway, immigrants (Chinese, Irish, Russians), the over-crowded docks, the fog-bound Thames, sooty, stinking pathways, the new and innovative, and so much more. And importantly, he wrote about it. In truth, ‘London created Dickens, just as Dickens created London’ (Ackroyd). The Fagin-like clothes-seller is from Andrew White Tuer’s Old London Street Cries and the Cries of To-day (1885).

[O' Clo! Illustration from page 61 of Andrew White Tuer's Old London Street Cries and the Cries of To-day.]

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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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]]> 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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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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