Dickensblog

Upcoming online talks

Tomorrow, April 27, Dr. Emily Dunbar of the Dickens Museum will give a talk on the museum's new Pickwick Papers exhibition at 10 a.m. Eastern. Go here to learn more and get a free ticket!

Also tomorrow, at 1 p.m. Eastern, the Dickens Fellowship will sponsor Lucinda Dickens Hawksley talking about her new book, Dickens and Travel. Go here for information.

A few minutes with Lucinda Hawksley

Dickens's great-great-great-granddaughter, while promoting her new book Letters of Great Women in Dubai, answered some questions about her ancestor's life and works. Click here to learn which Dickens books she rereads, her favorite Dickens quote, and what surprised her most about him.

'Dickens and Staplehurst': A review

By Art Kilmer, Guest Blogger

On June 9, 1865, author Charles Dickens almost died. Pick up any biography of Dickens, and you will find at least a couple of pages about the Staplehurst Rail Crash. On that day, Dickens; his mistress, Ellen Ternan; and her mother were traveling by rail from Boulogne to London, when the train derailed at Staplehurst, Kent. Due to a miscommunication and negligence, the train plunged over a bridge that was only half finished. Ten people died that day, and many others were physically and, as in Dickens’ case, mentally impacted for the rest of their lives. For Charles, that would be another five years to the day.

Actor and author Gerald Dickens, Charles’ great-great-grandson, has made an effort to shed more light on this event. In his new book, Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash, Gerald attempts to give full details of the event. Not only does he explain what happened to Dickens on that tragic day, but we also learn about the ten victims, some of the survivors, and the railroad employees who were involved with the crash.

As Gerald says of his book: “At its heart this is a story of a single moment in time: a biography of a day.” 

Mr. Dickens comes to the museum

The Dickens Museum is hosting a virtual filmed version of Gerald Dickens's one-man show Mr. Dickens Is Coming!, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern on February 6. Go here to learn more and to buy tickets! 

A virtual 'Chimes'

Tomorrow (Friday) at 5 p.m. GMT/12 p.m. Eastern, the Dickens Museum will host a Zoom performance of The Chimes by actor Dominic Gerrard. Gerrard and Lucinda Dickens Hawksley will take questions after the performance. Go here to learn more and to buy tickets!

Spotlight on 'The Cricket'

The Dickens Museum is displaying some of John Leech's sketches for The Cricket on the Hearth, to remind visitors that Dickens wrote more than one Christmas book! The Guardian has an article about the exhibit and the book, with quotes from Lucinda Dickens Hawksley about this and her ancestor's other Christmas books. 

Gerald Dickens, illustrated

This short piece about Gerald Dickens has some terrific photos of him performing his one-man Christmas Carol, taken by Ron MacArthur. You really get a sense of the energy and physicality he brings to the show!

Doings of the Dickens descendants

Mark Dickens will give a Zoom presentation on "Charles Dickens -- A Family Perspective" on Wednesday, December 1, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern. And Lucinda Dickens Hawksley will give an online talk on "Charles Dickens's Christmas Books" on Wednesday, December 8, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Follow the links to EventBrite for details and to purchase tickets!

Meanwhile, Gerald Dickens is back in America to present his one-man Christmas Carol! Go to his USA tour page to see if he's coming to a venue near you. If you're in the U.K., check his general tour page to see where he'll be performing once he gets back there.

Flowers for Dickens

Today, on the 151st anniversary of Dickens's death, Lucinda Hawksley tweeted out pictures (here, here, and here) of the beautiful wreaths placed on her great-great-great-grandfather's grave. One is from the Dickens Fellowship, the other -- made with Dickens's favorite flower, the scarlet geranium -- from the children of Gad's Hill School. 

As John Forster wrote of Dickens's funeral, "Then, later in the day and all the following day, came unbidden mourners in such crowds, that the Dean had to request permission to keep open the grave until Thursday; but after it was closed they did not cease to come . . . . He alluded to this in the impressive funeral discourse delivered by him in the Abbey on the morning of Sunday the 19th, pointing to the fresh flowers that then had been newly thrown (as they still are thrown, in this the fourth year after his death), and saying that 'the spot would thenceforward be a sacred one with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of the literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue.'"

Gerald Dickens on the Staplehurst train crash

Gerald Dickens is joining the family novel-writing business! He's working on a novel about the train crash that nearly killed his great-great-grandfather, and will be giving a talk about it on June 9, the anniversary of the crash, at Revelation Ashford in Kent. More information is here, and tickets for the talk are available here.