Charles Dickens 200th Birthday Anniversary
30 Mar 2012
Dear Friends,
Growing up in England, Dickens was required reading at school, and my family had a complete set of his novels on the family bookshelf, so I was brought up on Charles Dickens. We visited Bleak House, located in a village just a few miles from St Albans, I honestly can`t remember much about it.
Born in lovely Portsmouth, in the south of England in 1842, his house is still standing, and can be visited. Many of his books are set in Victorian England, principally London, where there can still be seen many of the buildings that he depicted in his books. Charles Dickens had a remarkable life and created literature characters that will live forever in our hearts - David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and the all-time Christmas favorite 'A Christmas Carol', with Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.
He visited America in 1842 and became a lifelong friend of Henry Longfellow having met when he landed at Boston.
Worldwide celebrations of his 200th Birthday will be held across 50 countries and here in the US, but why not visit his hometown, see his plays, celebrate Dickens in his own Victorian England.
John Dimmock