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Charles Dickens

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Writers and critics

   CAPTION: Charles Dickens

   Charles Dickens Acclaimed as one of the most famous authors that ever
   lived
   Born: 7 February 1812
   Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
   Died: 9 June 1870
   Gad's Hill Place, Higham, Kent, England
   Occupation(s): Novelist

   Charles John Huffam Dickens FRSA ( 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870),
   pen-name " Boz", was an English novelist. During his career Dickens
   achieved massive worldwide popularity, winning acclaim for his rich
   storytelling and memorable characters. Considered one of the English
   language's greatest writers, he was the foremost novelist of the
   Victorian era as well as a vigorous social campaigner.

   Later critics, beginning with George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton,
   championed his mastery of prose, his endless invention of memorable
   characters and his powerful social sensibilities. Yet he also received
   criticism from his more rarefied readers, including George Henry Lewes,
   Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, who list faults such as
   sentimentality, unrealistic events and grotesque characters.

   The popularity of his novels and short stories during his lifetime and
   to the present is demonstrated by the fact that none have ever gone out
   of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, which was the usual format
   for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories would be
   eagerly anticipated by the reading public. He is regarded by many as
   the greatest writer of his time.

Life

   charles dickens was born in a manger in 1878 there were sheep and dogs
   standing around. waight that was jesus. thats my bad. thats wats up
   sucka free on mtv i am a sweet homieAlthough his early years were an
   idyllic time, he thought himself then as a "very small and
   not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". He spent his time outdoors,
   reading voraciously with a particular fondness for the picaresque
   novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. He talked later in life
   of his extremely poignant memories of childhood and his continuing
   photographic memory of people and events that helped bring his fiction
   to life. His family was moderately well-off, and he received some
   education at the private William Giles' school in Chatham but all that
   changed when his father, after spending too much money entertaining and
   retaining his social position, was imprisoned for debt at Marshalsea.

   At the age of twelve, Dickens was deemed old enough to work and began
   working for ten hours a day in Warren's boot-blacking factory, located
   near the present Charing Cross railway station. He spent his time
   pasting labels on the jars of thick polish and earned six shillings a
   week. With this money, he had to pay for his lodging in Camden Town and
   help to support his family, most of whom were living with his father,
   who was incarcerated in the nearby Marshalsea debtors' prison.

   After a few months his family was able to leave Marshalsea but their
   financial situation only improved some time later, partly due to money
   inherited from his father's family. His mother did not immediately
   remove Charles from the boot-blacking factory, which was owned by a
   relation of hers. Dickens never forgave his mother for this, and
   resentment of his situation and the conditions under which
   working-class people lived became major themes of his works. As Dickens
   wrote in David Copperfield, judged to be his most clearly
   autobiographical novel, "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!" Eventually he
   attended the Wellington House Academy in North London.

   In May 1827, Dickens began work in the office of Ellis and Blackmore as
   a law clerk, a junior office position with potential to become a
   lawyer, a profession for which he later showed his dislike in his many
   literary works. He later became a court stenographer at the age of 17.

   In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, who is said to be
   the model for Dora in David Copperfield. Their courtship met with
   diapproval by her parents and was effectively ended when she was sent
   to school in Paris.

   In 1834, Dickens became a journalist, reporting parliamentary debate
   and travelling Britain by stagecoach to cover election campaigns for
   the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches which
   appeared in periodicals from 1933, formed his first collection of
   pieces Sketches by Boz which were published in 1836 and led to his
   first novel, The Pickwick Papers being serialised from March 1836. He
   continued to contribute to and edit journals for much of his life.

   On 2 April 1836, he married Catherine Thompson Hogarth ( 1816– 1879),
   the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. After
   a brief honeymoon in Chalk, they set up home in Bloomsbury where they
   produced ten children. Their children were:
     * Charles Culliford Boz Dickens ( 6 January 1837–1896).
     * Mary Angela Dickens ( 6 March 1838–1896).
     * Kate Macready Dickens ( 29 October 1839–1929).
     * Walter Landor Dickens ( 8 February 1841–1863). Died in India.
     * Francis Jeffrey Dickens ( 15 January 1844–1886).
     * Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens ( 28 October 1845–1912).
     * Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens ( 18 April 1847–1872).
     * (Sir) Henry Fielding Dickens ( 15 January 1849–1933). He was the
       grandfather of the writer Monica Dickens.
     * Dora Annie Dickens ( 16 August 1850–April 1851).
     * Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens ( 13 March 1852– 23 January 1902). He
       migrated to Australia, and became a member of the New South Wales
       state parliament. He died in Moree, NSW.

   In the same year, he accepted the job of editor of Bentley's
   Miscellany, a position he would hold until 1839 when he fell out with
   the owner. However, his success as a novelist continued, producing
   Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), then The Old
   Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock
   series (1840-41), all being published in monthly installments before
   being made into books.

   In 1842, he travelled together with his wife to the United States which
   was successful despite his support for the abolition of slavery; the
   trip is described in the short travelogue American Notes for General
   Circulation and is also the basis of some of the episodes in Martin
   Chuzzlewit. Shortly thereafter, he began to show interest in Unitarian
   Christianity, although he remained an Anglican, at least nominally, for
   the rest of his life. Dickens's writings continued to be popular,
   especially A Christmas Carol in 1843, the first of his Christmas books,
   which was reputedly written in a matter of weeks.

   After living briefly abroad, in Italy (1844) and Switzerland (1846),
   Dickens continued his success with Dombey and Son (1848); David
   Copperfield (1849-50); Bleak House (1852-53); Hard Times (1854); Little
   Dorrit (1857); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); and Great Expectations
   (1861). Dickens was also a major contributor for the journals,
   Household Words (1850–59) and All the Year Round (1858–70).

   In 1856, his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place. This
   large house in Higham, Kent, was very special to the author as he had
   walked past it as a child and had dreamed of living in it. The area was
   also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 1
   and this literary connection pleased Dickens.

   When Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, divorce was almost
   unthinkable, particularly for someone as famous as he was, and so he
   continued to maintain her in a house for the next twenty years until
   she died. Although they were initially happy together, Catherine did
   not seem to share quite the same boundless energy for life which
   Dickens had, although her job of looking after their ten children and
   the pressure of living with, and keeping house for, a world-famous
   novelist certainly did not help.

   Catherine's sister had Georgina move in to help her, but there were
   rumours that Charles was romantically linked to his sister-in-law,
   possibly fueled by the fact that she remained at Gadshill to look after
   the younger children when Catherine left. An indication of his marital
   dissatisfaction was when, in 1855, he went to meet his first love,
   Maria Beadnell. Maria was by this time married as well, but she seemed
   to have fallen short of Dickens's romantic memory of her.

   On 9 June 1865, while returning from France to see the actress Ellen
   Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash in which the
   first seven carriages of the train plunged off of a bridge that was
   being repaired. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track
   was the one in which Dickens was berthed. Dickens spent some time
   tending the wounded and the dying before rescuers arrived. Before
   finally leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual
   Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Typical of
   Dickens, he later used the terrible experience to write his short ghost
   story The Signal-Man in which the protagonist has a premonition of a
   rail crash.

   Dickens managed to avoid an appearance at the inquiry into the crash,
   as it would have become known that he was travelling that day with
   Ellen Ternan and her mother, which could have caused a scandal. Ellen
   had been Dickens's companion since the break-up of his marriage, and,
   as he had met her in 1857, she was most likely the ultimate reason for
   that break-up. She continued to be his companion, and likely mistress,
   until his death. The dimensions of the affair were unknown until the
   publication of Dickens and Daughter, a book about Dickens's
   relationship with his daughter Kate, in 1939. Kate Dickens worked with
   author Gladys Storey on the book prior to her death in 1929, and
   alleged that Dickens and Ternan had a son who died in infancy, though
   no contemporary evidence exists.
   Dickens Statue in Philadelphia
   Enlarge
   Dickens Statue in Philadelphia

   Dickens, though unharmed, never really recovered from the Staplehurst
   crash, and his normally prolific writing shrank to completing Our
   Mutual Friend and starting the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
   Much of his time was taken up with public readings from his best-loved
   novels. Dickens was fascinated by the theatre as an escape from the
   world, and theatres and theatrical people appear in Nicholas Nickleby.
   The travelling shows were extremely popular and, after three tours of
   British Isles, Dickens gave his first public reading in the United
   States at a New York City theatre on 2 December 1867.

   The effort and passion he put into these readings with individual
   character voices is also thought to have contributed to his death. When
   he undertook another English tour of readings (1869–70), he became ill
   and five years to the day after the Staplehurst crash, on 9 June 1870,
   he died at home at Gad's Hill Place after suffering a stroke.

   Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester Cathedral, he was buried
   in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb
   reads: "He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the
   oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost
   to the world." Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected to
   honour him. The only life-size bronze statue of Dickens, cast in 1891
   by Francis Edwin Elwell, is located in Clark Park, Philadelphia, in the
   United States.

Literary style

   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

   Dickens's writing style is florid and poetic, with a strong comic
   touch. His satires of British aristocratic snobbery — he calls one
   character the "Noble Refrigerator" — are often popular. Comparing
   orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats, or dinner-party
   guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flights of
   fancy.

Characters

   Charles Dickens used his rich imagination, sense of humour and detailed
   memories, particularly of his childhood, to enliven his fiction.
   Charles Dickens used his rich imagination, sense of humour and detailed
   memories, particularly of his childhood, to enliven his fiction.

   The characters are among the most memorable in English literature;
   certainly their names are. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Fagin, Mrs
   Gamp, Charles Darnay, Oliver Twist, Micawber, Pecksniff, Miss Havisham,
   Wackford Squeers and many others are so well known and can be believed
   to be living a life outside the novels that their stories have been
   continued by other authors. Dickens loved the style of 18th Century
   gothic romance, though it had already become a bit of a joke — Jane
   Austen's Northanger Abbey being a well known parody — and while some
   are grotesques, their eccentricities do not usually overshadow the
   stories. One 'character' most vividly drawn throughout his novels is
   London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to
   the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital are
   described by someone who truly loved London and spent many hours
   walking its streets.

Episodic writing

   Most of Dickens's major novels were first written in monthly or weekly
   installments in journals such as Master Humphrey's Clock and Household
   Words, later reprinted in book form. These installments made the
   stories cheap, accessible and the series of regular cliff-hangers made
   each new episode widely anticipated. American fans even waited at the
   docks in New York, shouting out to the crew of an incoming ship, "Is
   Little Nell dead?" Part of Dickens's great talent was to incorporate
   this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at
   the end. The monthly numbers were illustrated by, amongst others, "
   Phiz" (a pseudonym for Hablot Browne). Among his best-known works are
   Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two
   Cities, Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, The Pickwick Papers, and A
   Christmas Carol.
   Dickens's technique of writing in monthly or weekly installments
   (depending on the work) can be understood by analyzing his relationship
   with his illustrators. The several artists who filled this role were
   privy to the contents and intentions of Dickens's installments before
   the general public. Thus, by reading these correspondences between
   author and illustrator, the intentions behind Dickens's work can be
   better understood. What was hidden in his art is made plain in these
   letters. These also reveal how the interests of the reader and author
   do not coincide. A great example of that appears in the monthly novel
   Oliver Twist. At one point in this work, Dickens had Oliver become
   embroiled in a robbery. That particular monthly installment concludes
   with young Oliver being shot. Readers expected that they would be
   forced to wait only a month to find out the outcome of that gunshot. In
   fact, Dickens did not reveal what became of young Oliver in the
   succeeding number. Rather, the reading public was forced to wait two
   months to discover if the boy lived. This shows how the wishes of an
   involved reader--to find out what happened--do not coincide with the
   intention of the author, which was to extend the suspense.
   Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style was his
   exposure to the opinions of his readers. Since Dickens did not write
   the chapters very far ahead of their publication, he was allowed to
   witness the public reaction and alter the story depending on those
   public reactions. A fine example of this process can be seen in his
   weekly serial The Old Curiosity Shop, which is a chase story. In this
   novel, Little Nell and her Grandfather are fleeing the villain Quilp.
   The progress of the novel follows the gradual success of that pursuit.
   As Dickens wrote and published the weekly installments, his good friend
   John Forster pointed out to Dickens: "You know you're going to have to
   kill her, don't you." Why this end was necessary can be explained by a
   brief analysis of the difference between the structure of a comedy
   versus a tragedy. In a comedy, the action covers a sequence "You think
   they're going to lose, you think they're going to lose, they win." In
   tragedy, it's: "You think they're going to win, you think they're going
   to win, they lose". As you see, the dramatic conclusion of the story is
   implicit throughout the novel. So, as Dickens wrote the novel in the
   form of a tragedy, the sad outcome of the novel was a foregone
   conclusion. If he had not caused his heroine to lose, he would not have
   completed his dramatic structure. Dickens admitted that his friend
   Forster was right and, in the end, Little Nell died. Dickens himself
   admitted that he did not want to kill Nell, but he was a novelist and
   he had to complete the novel's structure. See: Dickens' [sic] Working
   Notes for His Novels.

Social commentary

   Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary.
   He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of
   Victorian society. Throughout his works, Dickens retained an empathy
   for the common man and a scepticism for the fine folk. Dickens's second
   novel, Oliver Twist (1839), was responsible for the clearing of the
   actual London slum that was the basis of the story's Jacob's Island. In
   addition, with the character of the tragic prostitute, Nancy, Dickens
   "humanised" such women for the reading public; women who were regarded
   as "unfortunates," inherently immoral casualties of the Victorian
   class/economic system. Bleak House and Little Dorrit elaborated
   expansive critiques of the Victorian institutional apparatus: the
   interminable lawsuits of the Court of Chancery that destroyed people's
   lives in Bleak House and a dual attack in Little Dorrit on inefficient,
   corrupt patent offices and unregulated market speculation.

Literary techniques

   Dickens often uses idealized characters and highly sentimental scenes
   to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals.
   The extended death scene of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop
   (1841) was received as incredibly moving by contemporary readers, but
   viewed as ludicrously sentimental by Oscar Wilde . In 1903 Chesterton
   says, on the same topic, "It is not the death of Little Nell, but the
   life of Little Nell, that I object to."

   In Oliver Twist, Dickens provides readers with an idealized portrait of
   a young boy so inherently and unrealistically "good" that his values
   are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement
   in a gang of young pickpockets. While later novels also centre on
   idealised characters (Esther Summerson in Bleak House and Amy Dorrit in
   Little Dorrit), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal
   of poignant social commentary. Many of his novels are concerned with
   social realism, focusing on mechanisms of social control that direct
   people's lives (e.g., factory networks in Hard Times and hypocritical,
   exclusionary class codes in Our Mutual Friend).

   Dickens also employs incredible coincidences (for example, Oliver Twist
   turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper class family that randomly
   rescues him from the dangers of the pickpocket group). Such
   coincidences are a staple of the eighteenth-century picaresque novels
   (such as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones) that Dickens enjoyed so much. So
   there is an intertextual aspect to this convention. However, to Dickens
   these were not just plot devices but an index of a Christian humanism
   that led him to believe that good wins out in the end, often in
   unexpected ways (see Divine grace). Looking at this theme from a
   biographical context, Dickens's life, against many odds, led him from a
   disconsolate child forced to work long hours in a boot-blacking factory
   at age 12 (his father was in the Marshalsea debtor's prison) to his
   status as the most popular novelist in England by the age of 27.

Autobiographical elements

   All authors incorporate autobiographical elements in their fiction, but
   with Dickens this is very noticeable, even though he took pains to
   cover up what he considered his shameful, lowly past. David Copperfield
   is one of the most clearly autobiographical but the scenes from Bleak
   House of interminable court cases and legal arguments could only come
   from a journalist who has had to report them. Dickens's own family was
   sent to prison for poverty, a common theme in many of his books, and
   the detailed depiction of life in the Marshalsea prison in Little
   Dorrit is due to Dickens's own experiences of the institution. Little
   Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop is thought to represent Dickens's
   sister-in-law, Nicholas Nickleby's father and Wilkins Micawber are
   certainly Dickens's own father, just as Mrs Nickleby and Mrs Micawber
   are similar to his mother. The snobbish nature of Pip from Great
   Expectations also has some affinity to the author himself. Dickens may
   have drawn on his childhood experiences, but he was also ashamed of
   them and would not reveal that this was where he got his realistic
   accounts of squalor. Very few knew the details of his early life until
   six years after his death when John Forster published a biography on
   which Dickens had collaborated. A shameful past in Victorian times
   could taint reputations, just as it did for some of his characters, and
   this may have been Dickens's own fear.
   Spoilers end here.

Legacy

   A scene from Oliver Twist, from an early 20th Century edition.
   Enlarge
   A scene from Oliver Twist, from an early 20th Century edition.

   Charles Dickens was a well-known personality and his novels were
   immensely popular during his lifetime. His first full novel, The
   Pickwick Papers (1837), brought him immediate fame and this continued
   right through his career. He maintained a high quality in all his
   writings and, although rarely departing greatly from his typical "
   Dickensian" method of always attempting to write a great "story" in a
   somewhat conventional manner (the dual narrators of Bleak House are a
   notable exception), he experimented with varied themes,
   characterisations and genres. Some of these experiments were more
   successful than others and the public's taste and appreciation of his
   many works have varied over time. He was usually keen to give his
   readers what they wanted, and the monthly or weekly publication of his
   works in episodes meant that the books could change as the story
   proceeded at the whim of the public. A good example of this are the
   American episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit which were put in by Dickens in
   response to lower than normal sales of the earlier chapters. In Our
   Mutual Friend the inclusion of the character of Riah was a positive
   portrayal of a Jewish character after he was criticised for the
   depiction of Fagin in Oliver Twist.

   His popularity has waned little since his death and he is still one of
   the best known and most read of English authors. At least 180 motion
   pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works help confirm his
   success. Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own
   lifetime and as early as 1913 a silent film of The Pickwick Papers was
   made. His characters were often so memorable that they took on a life
   of their own outside his books. Gamp became a slang expression for an
   umbrella from the character Mrs Gamp and Pickwickian, Pecksniffian and
   Gradgrind all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits
   of such characters who were quixotic, hypocritical or emotionlessly
   logical. Sam Weller, the carefree and irreverent valet of The Pickwick
   Papers, was an early superstar, perhaps better known than his author at
   first. It is likely that A Christmas Carol is his best-known story,
   with new adaptations almost every year. It is also the most-filmed of
   Dickens's stories, many versions dating from the early years of cinema.
   This simple morality tale with both pathos and its theme of redemption,
   for many, sums up the true meaning of Christmas and eclipses all other
   Yuletide stories in not only popularity, but in adding archetypal
   figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) to the Western
   cultural consciousness. A Christmas Carol was written by Dickens in an
   attempt to forestall financial disaster as a result of flagging sales
   of his novel Martin Chuzzlewit. Years later, Dickens shared that he was
   "deeply affected" in writing A Christmas Carol and the novel
   rejuvenated his career as a renowned author.

   At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of
   the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and
   disadvantaged at the heart of empire. Through his journalism he
   campaigned on specific issues — such as sanitation and the workhouse —
   but his fiction was probably all the more powerful in changing public
   opinion in regard to class inequalities. He often depicted the
   exploitation and repression of the poor and condemned the public
   officials and institutions that allowed such abuses to exist. His most
   strident indictment of this condition is in Hard Times (1854),
   Dickens's only novel-length treatment of the industrial working class.
   In that work, he uses both vitriol and satire to illustrate how this
   marginalised social stratum was termed "Hands" by the factory owners,
   that is, not really "people" but rather only appendages of the machines
   that they operated. His writings inspired others, in particular
   journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class
   oppression. For example, the prison scenes in Little Dorrit and The
   Pickwick Papers were prime movers in having the Marshalsea and Fleet
   Prisons shut down. As Karl Marx said, Dickens, and the other novelists
   of Victorian England, "…issued to the world more political and social
   truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians,
   publicists and moralists put together…". The exceptional popularity of
   his novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (Bleak House,
   1853; Little Dorrit, 1857; Our Mutual Friend, 1865) underscored not
   only his almost preternatural ability to create compelling storylines
   and unforgettable characters, but also insured that the Victorian
   public confronted issues of social justice that had commonly been
   ignored.

   His fiction, with often vivid descriptions of life in
   nineteenth-century England, has inaccurately and anachronistically come
   to globally symbolise Victorian society (1837–1901) as uniformly
   "Dickensian," when in fact, his novels' time span is from the 1770s to
   the 1860s. In the decade following his death in 1870, a more intense
   degree of socially and philosophically pessimistic perspectives
   invested British fiction; such themes were in contrast to the religious
   faith that ultimately held together even the bleakest of Dickens's
   novels. Later Victorian novelists such as Thomas Hardy and George
   Gissing were influenced by Dickens, but their works display a lack or
   absence of religious belief and portray characters caught up by social
   forces (primarily via lower-class conditions) that steer them to tragic
   ends beyond their control.

   Novelists continue to be influenced by his books; for example, such
   disparate current writers as Anne Rice, Tom Wolfe and John Irving
   evidence direct Dickensian connections. Humorist James Finn Garner even
   wrote a tongue-in-cheek "politically correct" version of A Christmas
   Carol. Ultimately, Dickens stands today as a brilliant, innovative and
   sometimes flawed novelist whose stories and characters have become not
   only literary archetypes but also part of the public imagination.

Adaptations of readings

   There have been several performances of Dickens readings by Emlyn
   Williams, Bransby Williams and also Simon Callow in the Mystery of
   Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd.

Museums and festivals

   There are museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works in
   many of the towns with which he was associated.
     * The Charles Dickens Museum, London is the only one of Dickens's
       London homes to survive. He lived there only two years but in this
       time wrote The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.
       It contains a major collection of manuscripts, original furniture
       and memorabilia.
     * Charles Dickens' Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth is the house in
       which Dickens was born. It has been re-furnished in the likely
       style of 1812 and contains Dickens memorabilia.
     * The Dickens House Museum in Broadstairs is the house of Miss Mary
       Pearson Strong, the basis for Miss Betsey Trotwood in David
       Copperfield. It is visible across the bay from the original Bleak
       House (also a museum until 2005) where David Copperfield was
       written. The museum contains memorabilia, general Victoriana and
       some of Dickens's letters. Broadstairs has held a Dickens Festival
       annually since 1937.
     * A Dickens World theme park covering 71 500 square feet, and
       including a cinema and restaurants, is scheduled to open in Chatham
       in 2007. It will be on the site of the formal naval dockyard where
       Dickens's father once worked in the Navy Pay Office.
     * The Charles Dickens Centre in Eastgate House, Rochester, closed in
       2004, but the garden containing the author's Swiss chalet is still
       open. The 16th-Century house, which appeared as Westgate House in
       The Pickwick Papers and the Nun's House in Edwin Drood, will
       probably re-open under a related use. The city's annual Dickens
       Festival (summer) and Dickensian Christmas celebrations continue
       unaffected.

   There are also Dickens festivals across the world. Three notable ones
   from the United States are:
     * The Riverside Dickens Festival in Riverside, California, includes
       literary studies as well as entertainments.
     * The Great Dickens Christmas Fair has been held in San Francisco,
       California, since the 1970s. During the four or five weekends
       before Christmas, over 300 costumed performers mingle with and
       entertain thousands of visitors amidst the recreated full-scale
       blocks of Dickensian London. This is the oldest, largest, and most
       successful of the modern Dickens festivals outside of England.
     * Dickens on The Strand in Galveston, Texas, is a holiday festival
       held on the first weekend in December since 1974, where bobbies,
       Beefeaters and the "Queen" herself are on hand to recreate the
       Victorian London of Charles Dickens. Characters from Dickens novels
       walk the street.

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