AustLit

My Note Book reports on the case of Mr E. J. Dickens and includes a paragraph reproduced from the pages of the Home News.

Dickens had died in 'a Jersey city'. He had been 'travelling under a false name, and he was not in possession of a shilling'. Prior to his death, Dickens had 'made applications for employment at the offices of some of the New York journals'. He claimed to have been connected with the English and colonial press, and named several Australian newspapers for which claimed to have worked. The journals included the Melbourne Argus and several non-existent papers such as the 'Geelong Spirit of the Age', of which Dickens claimed to have been 'sole editor and manager'.

The writer for My Note Book states: 'I have never hear of a Mr. Edwin J. Dickens as connected with the English press. The father of the celebrated novelist was connected with the Morning Chronicle ... but although Charles Dickens has several brothers, not one, I believe, was ever a member of the newspaper world. One of the sons Mr. George Hogarth, however, whose eldest daughter married Charles Dickens, was connected with the London press, and was a literary man of very considerable abilities; and he came out to Melbourne a few years since, and from this city transmitted many Australian sketches, written with great graphic force and spirit, which appeared in the Household Words some months since. Mr. Hogarth left Melbourne, and I understood him to have gone to Sydney. He is the only person connected with Mr. Charles Dickens, who ever came out to this colony.'