Welcome to the bicentennary

The Dickens Fellowship, founded in 1902, is a worldwide association of people who share an interest in the life and works of Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870). For more information about our organisation visit the organisation page.

For the latest news and comment, please refer to Household Words at the lower left of this page. Use the Search Box in the upper right to enter a word or phrase to search the entire site.

Message from the President

Annual Conference 2012

portsmouth spinnaker tower2012 - Portsmouth, England

International Dickens Fellowship Bicentenary Conference - 2012

Dickens’s Portsmouth Thursday 9th –Tuesday 14th August

DRAFT Outline Programme

Conference bed & breakfast rooms are en suite in Portsmouth University’s Rees Hall facing over Southsea Common to the Isle of Wight. It is ¾ miles from Portsmouth and Southsea Station and near Guildhall Square where lectures will be largely be held, tho’ evening meals will in Rees Hall. (The Olympics – arranged to celebrate Dickens’s bicentenary – will be on a Big Screen in the Square.) The City’s Exhibition on Sherlock Holmes (also born in Portsmouth) is a 5-minute walk from Rees Hall.

Charles Dickens and Childhood

Tetterby FamilyONE-DAY CONFERENCE AT THE V&A MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD.

Dickens was a perceptive observer of the stages of child development, and records his own incoherent and overwhelming feelings of love, joy, fear and pain in his great novels of childhood: David Copperfield and Great Expectations. He was himself the father of 10 children, one of whom died in infancy. His writing swarms with babies, infants and children, scrambling their way to maturity in the bewildering adult world.

New Branches For The Bicentenary?

Pickwick addressing a meetingThe Dickens Fellowship is a very ‘organic’ organisation – it grows and shrinks and grows somewhere else. Since its foundation in 1902 many Branches have formed and disbanded, and others have formed and continue to flourish. There are currently over 50 branches of the Dickens Fellowship and affiliated societies in existence, but there is plenty of potential for more! We are currently in touch with several  enthusiastic people who are interested in creating new Dickens reading groups or new Dickens Fellowship Branches.

Currently, ‘Dickens activists’ are working to find like-minded people in the area around:

The Canterbury Guild of Guides

Charles Dickens Bicentenary Year 2012
Canterbury Tourist Guides Ltd. Canterbury England
www.canterburyguidedtours.com
email guides@canterburytouristguides.co.uk
Tel: +44 0 1227 459779

Wreath-laying at Westminster Abbey

Wreath-laying at Westminster Abbey to mark the 142nd Anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens. Assemble at 5.45 p.m. inside the West Door. Members may wish to attend Evensong beforehand in the Abbey at 5.00 p.m.

This Web Site is dedicated to the late Martha Rosso

A member of the Philadelphia Branch for over 35 years, Martha Rosso (née Pamplin) was one of the Fellowship's most dynamic and best loved figures. She contributed unstintingly to its business right to the very end of her life. Click here to read more about Martha Rosso.