Brief Chronology. The Life of Charles Dickens. Author s Life. of the

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1 The Life of Charles Dickens Charles Huffam Dickens, the second child of John and Elizabeth Dickens, was born in Landport on 7th Feb He became a great English writer and social critic and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period as well as the creator of some of the world's most memorable fictional characters. John Dickens supported his young family as a clerk in the Royal Navy pay office at Portsmouth. He later transferred to Chatham. Charles, went to a local school. Later, aged 12 he found work at Warren's Blacking Factory, and paid 6s a week, wrapping shoe-black bottles, while his father was sent to the Marshalsea for debt. Six months later a relative of John Dickens died, leaving him enough money in the will to pay off his debts and leave prison. Charles aged 16 wanted to become a reporter and in 1828, found work as a court reporter. Later he joined the Mirror of Parliament, a newspaper reporting daily Parliament proceedings. In 1833 Dickens had his first story published in the Monthly Magazine. Using the pen-name of 'Boz', Dickens also began contributing short stories to the Morning Chronicle and London Evening Chronicle. So popular were they that they were collected together and published as a book entitled Sketches by Boz (1836). But it was the serial publication of The Pickwick Dickens Parents, John & Elizabeth Papers that rocketed Charles to fame. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, celebrated for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. Dickens 15 major novels, numerous short stories and articles, as well as editor to periodicals as made him synonymous with a much loved era. The whole array of Victorian life and environment are conjured up, its busy, bustling London streets, the poverty stricken lives of the poor and needy, money grabbing, cruel schoolmasters, terrible social conditions, the life of the wealthy, swirling Brief Chronology of the Author s Life 1836 Mar 30 The Pickwick Papers first instalment published Apr 2 Charles Dickens marries Catherine Hogarth 1837 The Pickwick Papers first instalment published Jan 6 First of ten children born Jan 31 Publication of Oliver Twist begun in Bentley's. Writes Pickwick and Twist simultaneously until November of 1837 when Pickwick ends. Feb Publication of Oliver Twist begins. May 6th Catherine's sister Mary Hogarth was seventeen, pretty and living with the newly narried couple. She became like a little sister to Charles. On this evening Mary went with the couple to St. James' Theatre. After the group had returned late, Mary retired for the night. She took ill during the night. Despite care from doctor's she passed away in Dickens' arms the following day. Charles was devastated. The June installments of Twist and Pickwick were not published due to "the sudden death of a very dear young relative to whom he was most affectionately attached and whose society had been for a long time the chief solace of his labours." May 6th 17 year old Mary Hogarth accompanies Catherine and to St. James' Theatre. On the party's return,

2 around in the imaginative and acutely observant, genius, mind of Charles Dickens. Creator of so memorable and marvellous novels that are still read all over tbe world. Although much contact with Dickens these days comes via the many festivals and 'visitor' themes held around the country every year, it is his numerous, marvellous novels and short stories that will always keep his memory ' forever green'. Today these books are read with as much enjoyment,interest and pathos as they were during his lifetime. Pratically all his works have been transferred into either plays films or television serials and a complete new genre bears his name ' Dickensian'. The characters and stories created by his genius are so much loved, they have formed an important part of British culture. Such books include unforgettable, inspirational and cherished incidents, often quoted anecdotes, collection of remarkable individuals, so many extraordinary characters and magical story lines and outliving his life that ended prematurely in Dickens started school aged 9, but his education was interrupted when his father was imprisoned for debt in Forced to support himself he worked in a shoe-polish factory. The sense of humiliation and abandonment haunted him for life. Later describing his experience in David Copperfield. For the most part of his childhood he was self -educated. In 1827 Dickens took a job as a legal clerk. learning shorthand, he began working as a Court and Parliament reporter. In Dec 1833 Dickens published the first of a series of original descriptive sketches of daily life in London which eventually lead him to become the greatest novelist of his time. However such literary successes were shadowed by domestic unhappiness. Marrying Catherine Hogarth ( ) in 1836 they had 10 children but a growing incompatibility, led to a relationship with a young actress, Ellen Ternan, they separated in Dickens suffered a fatal stroke on June 8th 1870 after working most of the day, writing about his beloved city of Rochester in his chalet at his Gad's Hill home, dying the following day ( June 9th). He was buried in Westminster Abbey five days later. Early Years Charles was devoted to his father, John, a friendly, talkative, feckless, grandly theatrical, and highly skilled at amassing debts man, "an optimist--he was like a cork, if he was pushed under water in one place, he always 'bobbed up to time' cheerfully in another, and felt none the worse for the dip as Charles once described his father. He immortalized his father as the comical and yet endearing Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, optimistically always waiting something to turn up a character who, in the midst of a crisis, likens himself to "a shattered fragment of the Temple once called Man." Like the genial Mr. Micawber, he was able to forge his affection for the rhetorical flourish and his improvidence into a kind of art. Contemplating a long-lived relative, and presumably a little short in the pocket, he once said this: "And I must express my tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the least of it) extremely problematical." Forster records Dickens's delight in this "celebrated sentence" of the well-intentioned but often exasperating father, whose industry, the son maintained with affectionate loyalty, was always "untiring." Charles feelings for his mother wasn t always as affectionate. When he finally let me be known that he was forced to work in a 'blacking factory' a part of his life that he tried to forget he also announced that it Mary retires for the night. Dickens hears a cry from ailing Mary's room. May 7th Mary passes away held in Dickens'. The devastated author postpones the next installments of Twist and Pickwick due to "the sudden death of a very dear young relative to whom he was most affectionately attached and whose society had been for a long time the chief solace of his labours." The character Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist was inspired by Mary Hogarth. Jun Only once in Dickens' literary career was a deadline missed. Writing two serialized novels at once, there was no June issue of "Pickwick" or "Twist" due to Mary's funeral 1838 Early 1838 Dickens and Hablot Browne, Nickleby illustrator travel to Yorkshire to see the boarding schools for themselves. Mar Nicholas Nickleby publication commences. Mar 6th Mary is born, Dickens' daughter. Mar 31 Nicholas Nickleby first instalment 1839 Jan Begins writing Barnaby Rudge. Oct Final instalment of Nickleby Oct 29th Kate Dickens born. Dickens gets idea for the Barnaby Rudge plot Barnaby Rudge. Begins writing this historical novel.

3 was his mother who wanted him to remain there. He bitterly stated that she could not comprehend why he should be removed from a situation of gainful employment. The angrily hurt author commented years later on his mother's betrayal son "I never afterwards forgot," in an autobiographical fragment that was not published until after his death, "I never can forget, that my mother was warm for sending me back." Elizabeth had gone to a ball on the evening before Charles was born. Admired as a cheerful soul, it seems she was somewhat more practical than her husband. Like the hapless Mrs. Micawber, she tried to shore up the family's finances with a scheme to open a school, which of course failed. Elizabeth inspired her son to draw one of his most amusing portraits, the absurd Mrs. Nickleby (Nicholas Nickleby ), who prattles on with sublime inconsequentiality and to great comic effect. Dickens's childhood was a sorry mixture of the fondly remembered and the wholly detested. The Dickens family was both large and almost always hard-pressed. In the profoundly autobiographical David Copperfield, the ever-pinched Mr. Micawber gives David some shrewd advice: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." Yet, like Dickens's father, Mr. Micawber remains ever hopeful--"in case anything turned up" his favourite expression. When Charles Dickens was a small boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, he got lost in the City, the teeming financial and commercial centre of the great metropolis of London. A friend of the family had taken him to look at the outside of St. Giles's Church with the hope of quenching a fantastical notion that had taken hold of him: young Dickens was convinced that on Sundays, the beggars of London, having cast off their weekday pretences to blindness, lameness and other physical maladies, and freshly attired in their holiday best, were to be seen marching into the temple of their patron saint, where they would then partake of divine service. Looking back on his own childhood, Dickens saw "a very small and not over-particularly-taken-care-of boy." who grew into a young man who, through the sheer fertility of his creative genius and an astonishing amount of hard work, transformed himself into the most famous writer of his age. In April 1856, Dickens wrote to John Forster of how clear it was to him that "one is driven by irresistible might until the journey is worked out!" By all accounts, Dickens was a remarkably sensitive child, and this awful period of "humiliation and neglect" marked him indelibly. Even at the height of his fame, he would forget himself in his dreams, and, as he said, "wander desolately back to that time of my life." Rambling about the beautiful countryside, young Dickens and his father came upon a handsome country house, Gad's Hill Place, standing on a high spot of ground on the main road between Rochester and Gravesend. This "wonderful mansion," which basked in a glorious Shakespearean glow, the very spot where Falstaff, in Henry IV, relieves the travellers of their treasure, became a sort of childhood dream for Dickens. His father told him: "If you were to be very persevering, and were to work hard, you might someday come to live in it."for once, John proved prescient. In 1856, Charles Dickens would purchase the "stupendous property" that had so enchanted him as a child, and take possession of it early the next year; and in 1860, the wandering novelist, whom one observer described as the "veriest vagabond," would settle there permanently Publication of The Old Curiosity Shop Jun and Jul Dickens and Catherine tour Scotland. Also their son, Walter, is born and Barnaby Rudge is published Jan Charles and Catherine travel to America. Jul 1842Return to England October 1842 American Notes published Late 1842, early 1843 Dickens begins work on Martin Chuzzlewit. Jan The first instalment printed 1843 Oct Dickens begins work on A Christmas Carol in. It is published during the holiday season of that year Jan 15 Francis Jeffery (Frank) third son is born. Jul Final installment of Martin Chuzzlewit is printed. Dickens returned to the United States for an extensive reading tour 1844 Francis Jeffrey (Frank) born. Dickens and family travel to Italy. Treated Madame de la Rue with mesmerism Alfred, his sixth child, is born

4 The Chatham idyll ended abruptly when John Dickens was transferred to London in 1822, a move that no way inspired him to remedy. The ill management of his affairs continued to bring terrible strains upon the household and creditors to the door. By early 1824, the house of cards was about to collapse. A few days after his 12th birthday, young Charles was sent to work pasting labels on bottles at a tumbledown, rat-overrun shoe polish factory on the Thames. Pay was 6s a week, hours 8am-8pm. "It is wonderful to me," he would later write of this catastrophe, "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age." But worse was to come when, on February 20, John was arrested for debt, and soon after the entire family (except for Charles and his older sister Fanny, who was studying at the RA of Music) joined him in the Marshalsea debtor's prison. Each evening, young Charles returned alone to his lodgings in Portrait of John Dickens Camden Town, a three-mile walk from Warren's Blacking factory. These cruel turns of fate, his humiliating enslavement to menial labour and his father's imprisonment and disgrace-- would haunt Dickens for the remainder of his life. Abandoned children and orphans like Pip--the hero of Great Expectations ( ; 1861)--are everywhere in his work, and abandonment of course need not be literal to wound deeply and permanently. After a few months in Marshalsea, his father s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him the sum of 450. On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was granted release from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left Marshalsea, for the home of Mrs. Roylance. Although Charles eventually attended the Wellington House Academy in North London, his mother did not immediately remove him from the bootblacking factory. The incident may have done much to confirm Dickens's view that a father should rule the family, a mother find her proper sphere inside the home. "I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back". His mother's failure to request his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women. Righteous anger stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield: "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!" The Wellington House Academy was not a good school. "Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmaster's sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr. Creakle's Establishment in David Copperfield." Working Career Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray's Inn, as 1846 Dickens and family travel to Lausanne, Switzerland.While Dickens was there gave a reading of the first instalment of Dombey to some of his friends. It went so well that the later wrote to his friend John Forster, "a great deal of money might possibly be made (if it were not infra dig) by one's having Readings of one's own books." This germ of an idea became Dickens' public readings. Publication of Dombey and Son begins. Nov Whole family leaves Lausanne & travels to Paris Feb Family leaves Paris ahead of schedule and return to England because Charley Dickens has scarlet fever. April 18 Sydney born 1848 July 1848 Dickens's beloved sister, Fanny, takes ill. Sep Fanny dies of consumption. She had been his childhood companion, the model for Fan in A Christmas Carol. Her death was painful and lingering. After her death Dickens and some of his friends went on a walking tour of some of Dickens's childhood haunts. His thoughts turned to Fanny and their childhood. Haunted Man, his last Christmas book is published. The Beginning of Public Readings 1849 Jan begins to write David Copperfield and his son Henry Fielding Dickens is born. It seems natural that in early 1849 he began to write what he later called his favourite child, the novel David Copperfield Aug daughter, Dora Annie Dickens is born. Named after Dora in David Copperfield.

5 a junior clerk from May 1827 to Nov Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons, and he was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, and especially Bleak House whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much to enlighten the general public and served as a vehicle for dissemination of Dickens's own views regarding, particularly, the heavy burden on the poor who were forced by circumstances to "go to law". In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character Dora in id Copperfield. Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship ending the relationship by sending her to school in Paris. Aged 20, Dickens was energetic, full of good humour, enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear sense of what he wanted to become, yet knew he wanted to be famous. Drawn to the theatre he Catherine Hogarth landed an acting audition at Covent Garden, for which he prepared meticulously but which he missed because of a cold, ending his aspirations for a career on the stage. A year later he submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk" to the London periodical, Monthly Magazine. He rented rooms at Furnival's Inn becoming a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz (1836), Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years. Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname Moses which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, 'Moses' became 'Boses', later shortened to Boz. Dickens's own name was considered "queer" by a contemporary critic, who wrote in 1849: "Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations." He continued to contribute and edit journals throughout his literary career. The Sketches led to a proposal from publishers Chapman and Hall for him to supply text matching Robert Seymour's engraved illustrations in a monthly letterpress. Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment. Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series or sketches, hired "Phiz" to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two per instalment) for the story. The resulting story was the Pickwick Papers with the final instalment selling 40,000 copies. In Nov 1836 Dickens accepted the editorship of Bentley's Miscellany, a position he held for 3yrs, until falling out with the owner. In 1836 finishing the last instalments of Pickwick Papers he began Oliver Twist, writing as many as 90 pages The young Charles Dickens posts his first attempt at writing. Sketches by Boz in Johnson Court, London 1851 Catherine suffers a nervous collapse. Later Dora Dickens, the youngest daughter of Charles and Catherine, dies when she is only eight months old. John Dickens, Charles' father also dies 1852 Publication of Bleak House Birth of the youngest child of Charles Dickens, Edward known as "Plorn" Dickens gave the first public reading of one of his works. He read A Christmas Carol for a charity event. The readings were a combination of oratory and passionate acting. They were very popular. George Lewes complaines about the manner of death for a Bleak House character. Hard Times published Dickens has a disappointing reunion with Maria Winter (Maria Beadnell) the love of his youth. This incident was dramatized to become the reunion of Arthur Clennam and Flora Finching in Little Dorrit. However time had not been kind to Flora equally not so kind to Maria either Dickens purchases Gad's Hill Place. Works with Wilkie Collins on The Frozen Deep 1857 Hans Christian Anderson is entertained at Gad's Hill Place Dickens meets Ellen Ternan. January First performances of The Frozen Deep inspiration for A Tale of Two Cities, given. Professional actresses were

6 a month while continuing work on Bentley's, writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. Oliver Twist, published in 1838, became one of Dickens's better known stories, with dialogue that transferred well to the stage (most likely because he was writing stage plays at the same time) and more importantly, it was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist. Marriage & Writing On 2 April 1836, after a one year engagement during which he wrote The Pickwick Papers, he married Catherine Thomson Hogarth ( ), daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk, Kent, they returned to lodgings at Furnival's Inn. The first of 10 children, Charley, was born in Jan A few months later the family set up home in Bloomsbury, 48 Doughty Street, London, (Charles had a 3yr lease at 80 a year) Mar 1837-Dec His younger brother Frederick and Catherine's 17- year-old sister Mary moved in with them. Dickens became very attached to Mary, dying in his arms after a brief illness in Dickens idealised her and is thought to have drawn on memories of her for his later descriptions of Rose Maylie, Little Nell and Florence Dombey. His grief was so great that he was unable to make the deadline for the June instalment of Pickwick Papers and had to cancel the Oliver Twist instalment that month as well. At the same time, his success as a novelist continued. The young Queen Victoria read both Oliver Twist and Pickwick, staying up until midnight to discuss them. Nicholas Nickleby ( ), The Old Curiosity Shop and, finally, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series ( ) were all published in monthly instalments before being made into books. In 1842, Dickens and his wife made their first trip to the US and Canada. At this time Georgina Hogarth, another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone, to care for the young family they had left behind. She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in He described his impressions in a travelogue, American Notes for General Circulation. Some Martin Chuzzlewit ( ) episodes also drew on these first-hand experiences. Dickens includes in Notes a powerful condemnation of slavery, which he had attacked as early as The Pickwick Papers, correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad. (photos left to right) Dickens in New York, Sketch of Dickens in 1842 during American Tour. Sketch of Dickens's sister Fanny, bottom left.an 1839 portrait of a young Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise. Catherine Hogarth Dickens by Samuel Lawrence (1838) During his visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures and raising the question of international copyright laws and the pirating of his work in America. He hired to act in a benefit production of The Frozen Deep. Dickens plays the role of Richard Wardour who decides he is going to murder Frank Aldersley after he had stolen his true love, Clara Burnham. Instead Wardour ends up saving Aldersley's life at the cost of his own, diying in Clara's arms and earning her eternal gratitude for saving the life of the man she loves. The play brought about lasting changes to Dickens' life. In 1857 Dickens was not happy in his marriage. Aug Dickens meets Ellen Ternan, an actress hired to act in benefit performances of The Frozen Deep. Ellen later becomes his mistress. Their affair lasted until Dickens' death in Separates from his wife Catherine. Gives professional readings and continued to do so throughout his life.dickens was an electrifying performer. One of his most popular performances was Sikes and Nancy from Oliver Twist. It was an exceptionally dramatic selection in which Dickens acted out Nancy's murder. When Dickens was performing he threw himself into the characters heart and soul. So much so that the performances began to endanger his health Mar Dickens begins writing A Tale of Two Cities September Gad's Hill Place becomes Dickens' permanent residence. November Dickens and Wilkie Collins travel to North Devon on to gather materials for "A Message from the Sea". 1861

7 persuaded twenty five writers, headed by Washington Irving to sign a petition for him to take to Congress, but the press were generally hostile to this saying that he should be grateful for his popularity and that it was mercenary to complain about his work being pirated. Early 1840s Dickens showed an interest in Unitarian Christianity, although he never strayed from his attachment to popular lay Anglicanism. Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol, (1843), followed by The Chimes (1844) and The Cricket on the Hearth (1845). Of these A Christmas Carol was most popular, tapping into an old tradition, promoting a renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas in Britain and America. The seeds for the story were planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to witness conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged School, caused Dickens to resolve to "strike a sledge hammer blow" for the poor. As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He wrote that as the tale unfolded he "wept and laughed, and wept again" as he "walked about the black streets of London 15 or 20 miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed." After living briefly in Italy (1844) Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846); it was here he began work on Dombey and Son ( ). This and David Copperfield ( ) mark a significant artistic break in Dickens's career as his novels became more serious in theme and more carefully planned than his early works. In May 1846 Angela Burdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens about setting up a home for the redemption of fallen women from the working class. Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes of existing institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education and proficiency in domestic household chores. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named "Urania Cottage", in the Lime Grove section of Shepherds Bush, which managed for 10 years, setting the house rules and reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents. Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens's agenda for the women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it is estimated that about 100 women graduated between 1847 and In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House where he wrote Bleak House ( ), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorrit (1856). It was here he indulged in the amateur theatricals which are described in Forster's "Life". During this period he worked closely with the novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins. In 1856, his income from writing allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place in Higham, Kent. As a child, March Dickens begins a series of readings at St. James's Hall in October Dickens begins another series of readings September 12 Elizabeth Dickens mother dies. Nov Begins writing Our Mutual Friend January Son Walter dies in India 1865 Jun First instalment of Our Mutual Friend is published Charles Dickens is involved in the Staplehurst railway accident. Exactly five years before his actual death. Nov Final chapters of Our Mutual Friend are published 1869 Doctors advise him against giving further readings. The strain to his system was too great. Oct At Gad's Hill Place, Dickens begins work on The Mystery of Edwin Drood Mar 15 Dickens arranges a farewell tour and gives his last readings. It is thought that the effects of the readings was one of the factors leading to his death Dickens gives his final public reading Apr Publication of Drood begins Jun 8 Dickens spends the day working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood. During dinner he collapses. Jun 9 Dickens dies at Gad's Hill Place.

8 Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Pt.1 and this literary connection pleased him. In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for the play The Frozen Deep, which he and his protégé Wilkie Collins had written. Dickens fell deeply in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan, which was to last the rest of his life. Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18 when he made the decision, which went strongly against Victorian convention, to separate from his wife, Catherine in 1858, divorce was still unthinkable for someone as famous as he was. When Catherine left, never to see her husband again, she took with her one child, leaving the other children to be raised by her sister Georgina who chose to stay at Gad's Hill. During this period, whilst pondering about giving public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached by Great Ormond Street Hospital to help it survive its first major financial crisis through a charitable appeal. His 'Drooping Buds' essay in Household Words earlier in 3 Apr 1852 was considered by the hospital's founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital's success. Dickens, whose philanthropy was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospital's founder Charles West, to preside and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul. Dickens's public readings secured sufficient funds for an endowment to put the hospital on a sound financial footing, one of 9 Feb 1858 alone raised 3,000.After separating from Catherine, Dickens undertook a series of hugely popular and remunerative reading tours which, together with his journalism, were to absorb most of his creative energies for the next decade, in which he was to write only two more novels. His first reading tour, lasting from Apr 1858-Feb 1859, consisted of 129 appearances in 49 different towns throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Dickens's continued fascination with the theatrical world was written into the theatre scenes in Nicholas Nickleby, but more importantly he found an outlet in public readings. In 1866, he undertook a series of public readings in England and Scotland, with more the following year in England and Ireland. Major works, A Tale of Two Cities (1859); and Great Expectations (1861) soon followed and were resounding successes. During this time he was also the publisher and editor of, and a major contributor to, the journals Household Words ( ) and All the Year Round ( ). Dickens Last Decade Early Sep 1860, in a field behind Gad's Hill, Dickens made a great bonfire of almost his entire correspondence, only those letters on business matters were spared. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her, the extent of the affair between the two remains speculative. In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted that Ternan had unburdened herself with a Canon Benham, and gave currency to rumours they had been lovers. That the two had a son who died in infancy was alleged by Dickens's daughter, Kate Perugini, whom Gladys Storey had interviewed before her death in 1929, and published her account in Dickens and Daughter, although no contemporary evidence exists. On his death, Dickens settled an annuity on Ternan which made her a financially independent woman. Claire Tomalin's book, The Invisible Woman, argues that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13yrs of his life. The book was subsequently turned into a play, Little Nell, by Simon Gray. In Jun 1862 he was offered 10,000 for a Australian reading tour. He was enthusiastic, and even planned a travel book, The Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down, but ultimately decided against it. On 9 Jun 1865, while returning from Paris with Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The first seven carriages plunged off a cast iron bridge under repair. The only 1st class carriage to remain on the track was the one Dickens was travelling in. Before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water, saving some lives. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend. He returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Dickens later used this experience as material for his short ghost story, "The Signal-Man", in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash. He also based the story on several previous rail accidents, such as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash of 1861.Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquest to avoid disclosing he had been travelling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal. Although physically unharmed, Dickens never really recovered from the trauma of the crash. His normally prolific writing shrank to completing Our Mutual

9 Friend and starting the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. On 9 Nov 1867, Dickens sailed from Liverpool for his second American reading tour. Landing at Boston, he devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners. He was to perform 76 readings, netting 19,000, from Dec 1867-Apr Dickens spent the month shuttling between Boston and New York, where alone he gave 22 readings at Steinway Hall for this period. During his travels, he saw a significant change in the people and the circumstances of America. His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at Delmonico's on 18 April, when he promised never to denounce America again. By the end of the tour, the author could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. On 23 April, he boarded his ship to return to Britain, barely escaping a Federal Tax Lien against the proceeds of his lecture tour. Between , Dickens gave a series of 100 "farewell readings" in England, Scotland, and Ireland, beginning on 6 Oct. He delivered 75 in the provinces, with a further 12 in London. As he pressed on he was affected by giddiness and fits of paralysis and collapsed on 22 April 1869, at Preston in Lancashire. On doctor's advice, the tour was cancelled. After further provincial readings were cancelled, he began work on his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. When he had regained sufficient strength, Dickens arranged, with medical approval, for a final series of readings at least partially to make up to his sponsors what they had lost due to his illness. There were to be 12 performances, between 11 Jan-15 Mar 1870, the last taking place at 8pm at St. James's Hall in London. Although in grave health by this time, he read A Christmas Carol and The Trial from Pickwick. On 2 May, he made his last public appearance at a Royal Academy Banquet in the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, paying a special tribute on the death of his friend, illustrator Daniel Maclise. On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness. The next day, on 9 June, five years to the day after the Staplehurst rail crash, he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 Jun 1870, aged 58yrs. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.on Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey, Dean Arthur Penrhyn Stanley delivered a memorial elegy, lauding "the genial and loving humourist whom we now mourn", for showing by his own example "that even in dealing with the darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius could still be clean, and mirth could be innocent." Pointing to the fresh flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley assured those present that "the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue."