Wednesday 11th September 2024
Book your placeDickens at The Sherborne – Katherine Barker
7pm
Katherine Barker will talk on Charles Dickens, the actor William Macready, Sherborne House and how the first “Sherborne Literary Society”, the Sherborne Literary Institute which ran until 1882, was based there.
Between 1851 and 1860 on his retirement from the London stage, William Charles Macready rented Sherborne House. He arrived in Sherborne to discover an already established ‘Literary Institute’ which was looking for a new venue. Macready joined the committee and adapted the stable block west of Sherborne House, today’s Antiques Emporium. Macready had many London contacts and Charles Dickens was just one of many well-known speakers invited to give talks which we read about in the Literary Society Minute Books stored in the History Centre in Dorchester. The Sherborne Mercury newspaper, 23 December, 1854 noted: ‘Charles Dickens passed through Yeovil … on his way to Sherborne where, on Thursday, he read for the benefit of the Literary Institute one of his Christmas Carols.’
The talk will last for approximately 40 minutes with an informal Q&A afterwards.
