Online Exhibition: Character Sketches from the World of Charles Dickens
This exhibition celebrates one of the most enduring legacies of Charles Dickens's genius: the unforgettable characters he brought to life.
This is a cast of the sculpture Henry Dexter created during Dickens’s first visit to America in 1842. According to Dickens’s secretary, “While Mr. Dickens ate his breakfast, read his letters, and dictated his answers, Dexter was watching with the utmost earnestness . . . “
Henry Dexter. Plaster cast from marble original. 1842. Photo by Will Brown. Rare Book Department
The Victorian toy theatre, ”a penny plain, tuppence coloured,” as they were advertised, became an important creative outlet for the budding author. By the time he was nine years old, Dickens had written his first tragedy, “Misnar, the Sultan of India.”
An engraving after this portrait friend Daniel Maclise was used in the first editions of Nicolas Nickleby. William Makepeace Thackeray said of the portrait, “…a looking glass could not render a better facsimile. Here we have the real identical man Dickens.”
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Dickens loved to celebrate with his friends. He writes to his friend Thomas Beard: "I intend keeping the anniversary of my Birth Day . . . by asking a chosen few to join in a friendly quadrille . . . it will give us the greatest pleasure to see you."
Rare Book Department. Letters of Charles Dickens.
This portrait is an engraving from a drawing by S. Laurence with a small portrait of Fanny, Dickens eldest sister. It is inscribed with Dickens’s pseudonym Boz, which came for his mispronunciation of the name of his younger brother Moses.
This sketch was laid in to the autograph album of Priscilla Horton (Mrs. German Reed). Dickens found friends as well as material beyond the footlights. Priscilla Horton, a famous actress in “Boz’s” London, made a great hit in the Shakespearean role of Ariel.
Horton Album. Rare Book Department.
These three portrait studies of Dickens acting were drawn by his friend Daniel Maclise, an artist who was a member of the Royal Academy. Dickens was an exuberant theatergoer and would often reenact scenes for his friends, emulating famous actors of the day.
Daniel Maclise. Pen and ink on paper, 1842.