A Tale of Two Desks
6:30- 8:30pm
This exciting evening is in two parts, with an interval.
The first part is a slide-illustrated lecture, ‘A Tale of Two Desks’, showing how Charles Dickens combined two highly successful professional careers. He was a novelist, composing his fictional worlds at his writing desk, and he was also a public performer of his own works, giving dramatic recitals at his reading desk to vast audiences in Britain and in America. Dickens had an extraordinary gift for acting and impersonation, hence his close friendship with the great Victorian actor Macready, whom he visited here at Sherborne House. The lecture explores how Dickens used these histrionic skills to invent his characters in his study and perform them on the platform.
After an interval there will be two short readings from Dickens. The first is from one of the public readings Dickens crafted for performance, ‘The Story of Little Dombey’ (from Dombey and Son).
The second is a comic scene from Pickwick Papers, in which Mr Pickwick’s cockney manservant, Sam Weller, composes a Valentine’s letter to his sweetheart with the literary advice of his father, old Tony Weller.
Malcolm Andrews is a retired professor of English at the University of Kent. He was Editor of the journal The Dickensian for 30 years and has published several books on Dickens and landscape in art.
