Dickens Celebrations
Tuesday, 7 February 2012, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. World-wide celebrations include a British Council-sponsored read-a-thon that begins in Australia with a reading from Dombey and Son. (Follow the reading on Twitter via the hashtag #Dickens2012.)
Dickens's connections with Australia have been well-documented. They manifested themselves in his fictional characters and in his personal life. Dickens transported a raft of characters to New South Wales including Uriah Heep in David Copperfield, Abel Magwitch in Great Expectations and Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby. Two of Dickens’s sons, Alfred and Edward, also made the journey – in their case as free settlers.
Dickens wrote regularly about Australia in the journal Household Words. A collection of his essays from this source has been gathered in the five-book set Charles Dickens' Australia. Coral Lansbury, in her Dickens article for the Australian Dictionary of Biography notes that these articles were ‘widely published in the Australian press and helped to impose Dickens's own view of Australia on Australian life and society’. ('Charles Dickens 1812-1870')