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The Dickens Society is a non-profit organization founded on 29 December 1970 by 40 participants at the Modern Language Association Convention in New York City. [1] The Dickens Society's purpose is "to conduct, further, and support research, publication, instruction, and general interest in the life, times, and literature of Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870)." [2] In Dickens After Dickens (2020), Emily Bell notes, "The rise of neo-Victorian fiction in the 1960s further deepened the public interest in the author, and the establishment of the Dickens Society in 1970 represented another formal, international recognition of the value of academic study of Dickens." [3] According to David Paroissien, "The Dickens Society was always meant to be an international" organization in contrast to the Dickens Fellowship, explicitly functioning as a "service society" that "would dedicate itself to supporting the scholarly needs of its members." [4]
To increase engagement from its global membership in both hemispheres, the Dickens Society alternates its symposium location between various institutions and major cities in North America or Europe. [5] One important feature of the event is that there is no keynote; graduate students, early career researchers, independent scholars, and tenured faculty are allotted equal space and time to present research. [2] Delegates hail "from universities situated in Europe, India, Africa, the Middle East, the US and Canada." [6]
Each year, the Dickens Society funds several competitive scholarly awards and other financial support for its members, encouraging "research into almost anything to do with Dickens." [7] As Nancy Aycock Metz states, "The society still honors many of the original goals - an annual MLA seminar, transatlantic scholarly exchanges, prizes and stipends to support the work of young professionals." [5] The David Paroissien Prize, named for a notable founding member and Dickens Quarterly editor, is awarded "to the best peer-reviewed essay on Dickens published in a journal or edited collection." [8] The Robert B. Partlow Jr. Prize, which honors another founding member, former officer, and influential Dickensian scholar, [9] is conferred upon the best paper written and submitted prior to the annual symposium by a graduate student, independent scholar, or untenured faculty member. [8]
The journal of The Dickens Society, first entitled Dickens Studies Newsletter, predated the founding of the Society by a year. First published in 1970, [10] and edited by Robert Patten, the journal's title was changed to Dickens Quarterly in March 1984. [11] Dickens Quarterly's long-time general editor was the late scholar David Paroissien, who published a detailed retrospect about the organization and journal's history in 1996 [4] and again in 2010. [12] Currently, it is edited by Dominic Rainsford (Aarhus University).
Dickens Quarterly is published four times a year by Johns Hopkins University Press. A subscription to it is included in the cost of annual membership. [13] Recent issues are featured on Project Muse, and its archive appears on JSTOR. Together with the Dickensian (Dickens Fellowship) and Dickens Studies Annual, it forms a triad of leading publications devoted to presenting new research into the life and times of Charles Dickens.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and social critic. He created some of literature'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.
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Ellen Lawless Ternan, also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Wharton-Robinson, was an English actress known for her relationship with the elderly Charles Dickens.
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Andrew Mangham is a British literary critic and professor at the University of Reading. He is best known for his work on Victorian literature.
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Mary Scott Hogarth was the sister of Catherine Dickens and the sister-in-law of Charles Dickens. Hogarth first met Charles Dickens at age 14, and after Dickens married Hogarth's sister Catherine, Mary lived with the couple for a year. Hogarth died suddenly in 1837, which caused Dickens to miss the publication dates for two novels: The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. Hogarth later became the inspiration for a number of characters in Dickens novels, including Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. Charles and Catherine Dickens' first daughter was named Mary in her memory.
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.
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