Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens claimed there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably the Thellusson v Woodford case in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
The Charles Dickens Museum is an author's house museum at 48 Doughty Street in Holborn, London Borough of Camden. It occupies a typical Georgian terraced house which was Charles Dickens's home from 25 March 1837 to December 1839.
Ellen Lawless Ternan, also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Wharton-Robinson, was an English actress known for association with the famed author Charles Dickens.
Restoration House in Rochester, Kent in England, is a fine example of an Elizabethan mansion. It is so named after the visit of King Charles II on the eve of his restoration.
Dickens World was a themed attraction located in the Chatham Dockside retail park in Kent, England. It was themed around elements of the life and work of Charles Dickens. After a soft opening in April, Dickens World officially opened to the public on 25 May 2007. It closed on 12 October 2016.
Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad's Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens, the most successful British author of the Victorian era. Today the building is the independent Gad's Hill School.
Betsey Trotwood is a fictional character from Charles Dickens' 1850 novel David Copperfield.
Dickens in America is a 2005 television documentary following Charles Dickens' travels across the United States in 1842, during which the young journalist penned a travel book, American Notes.
Chauncy Hare Townshend, whose surname was spelt by his parents as Townsend, was a 19th-century English poet, clergyman, mesmerist, collector, dilettante and hypochondriac. He is mostly remembered for bequeathing his collections to the South Kensington Museum and the Wisbech & Fenland Museum in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He added an 'h' to his surname in 1835, upon inheriting; his first name was often spelled "Chauncey".
Cedric David Charles Dickens was an English author and businessman, a great-grandson of Charles Dickens and the steward of his literary legacy. He was a lifelong supporter of the Charles Dickens Museum in Holborn, London, and twice President of the Dickens Fellowship.
Catherine Thomson "Kate" Dickens was the wife of English novelist Charles Dickens, the mother of his ten children, and a writer of domestic management.
Gerald Roderick Charles Dickens is an English actor and performer best known for his one-man shows based on the novels of his great-great-grandfather Charles Dickens. He was the President of the Dickens Fellowship from 2005 to 2007.
Mary "Mamie" Dickens was the eldest daughter of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. She wrote a book of reminiscences about her father, and in conjunction with her aunt, Georgina Hogarth, she edited the first collection of his letters.
Joseph Clayton Clark, who worked under the pseudonym "Kyd", was a British artist best known for his illustrations of characters from the novels of Charles Dickens. The artwork was published in magazines or sold as watercolor paintings, rather than included in an edition of the novels.
The House of St Barnabas, at 1 Greek Street, Soho, is a Grade I Listed Georgian building in London notable for its rococo plasterwork interiors and for other architectural features.
Elliot Engel is an American author, writer, scholar, and lecturer.
Dickensian is a British drama television series that premiered on BBC One from 26 December 2015 to 21 February 2016. The 20-part series, created and co-written by Tony Jordan, brings characters from many Charles Dickens novels together in one Victorian London neighbourhood, as Inspector Bucket investigates the murder of Ebenezer Scrooge's partner Jacob Marley.
The letters of Charles Dickens, of which more than 14,000 are known, range in date from about 1821, when Dickens was 9 years old, to 8 June 1870, the day before he died. They have been described as "invariably idiosyncratic, exuberant, vivid, and amusing…widely recognized as a significant body of work in themselves, part of the Dickens canon". They were written to family, friends, and the contributors to his literary periodicals, who included many of the leading writers of the day. Their letters to him were almost all burned by Dickens because of his horror at the thought of his private correspondence being laid open to public scrutiny. The reference edition of Dickens's letters is the 12-volume Pilgrim Edition, edited by Graham Storey et al. and published by Oxford University Press.
A Dickens fair, Dickens Christmas fair, or Dickens festival is weekend or multi-weekend gathering, usually held in the United States, open to the public and typically commercial in nature, which attempts to recreate a Victorian English setting reminiscent of the novels of Charles Dickens. The British equivalent, known as a Dickensian evening, is distinct from its American counterpart because it is organised by local businesses and the town council to raise money for charity. Events may be outdoor, indoor or a combination of the two. The great majority are Christmas-themed, a reflection of the enduring legacy of Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The fairs generally include an abundance of costumed entertainers and fair-goers, musical and theatrical acts, and art, handicrafts, food and drink for sale.
