Celebrating Dickens' Bicentennial at the Morgan Library
It seems fitting that a 200th anniversary tribute to Charles Dickens (1812-1870), above all a great wit, would open with a cartoon. The sketch in The New Yorker by J.B. Handelsman features Dickens sitting opposite his editor, who is holding a manuscript of one of his novels. "I wish you would make up your mind, Mr. Dickens. Was it the best of times or was it the worst of times? It could scarcely have been both."
A Tale of Two Cities does not otherwise figure in this meticulous presentation of manuscripts, books, letters, photos, original illustrations and caricatures at The Morgan Library & Museum, now on view until February 12, 2012, Dickens' bicentennial birthday. But it serves to whet the appetite for this fascinating sampling of Dickensiana. The Morgan boasts the largest collection of Dickens material in the US, second only to the holdings of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Each display case serves up a treasure and sheds light on a different facet of the life and career of Britain's "first true literary superstar." Dickens' novels, and the films and theatrical productions made in homage to them, are well-known. Less known are his penchant for hypnosis and some of his philanthropic endeavors, the latter of which this exhibit uses as a starting point for its examination of Dickens as social reformer.
In collaboration with British heiress Angela Boudrett-Coudetts, Dickens founded Urania Cottage in 1847, a shelter for "fallen women" — that is, prostitutes and low-level criminals, though he never used the word prostitutes. Letters to Boudrett-Coudetts at the beginning of the show, dated 1846 and 1847, reveal a compassionate, hands-on manager intent on offering a safe haven to, and rehabilitating, the residents of the "Asylum," beginning with the clothes on their backs: "I have laid in all the dresses and linen of every sort for the whole house . . . I have made them as cheerful in appearance as they reasonably could be — at the same time very neat and modest."
The show is organized around half a dozen themes — America, Philanthropy, Collaboration, Mesmerization, Christmas Books and Story Weaver. Visitors thrill to the sight of the original story manuscript of A Christmas Carol, 66 pages of heavily revised scrawl, completed in 1843 in a mere six weeks time owing to the author's "acute" financial woes and the need to publish by Christmas.
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