It was at St. George’s Hall, St. George’s Square, Portsea that Dickens gave readings as part of his enormously-popular Reading Tours on 11 November 1858, and 24/25 May 1866. St George’s Hall no longer exists and Millgate House now occupies the site close to Gunwharf Quays.

In Charles Dickens as I Knew Him (1912) George Dolby, the manager of Dickens’s reading tours, recorded that during the 1866 tour he, Dickens, and Dickens’s journalistic collaborator, William Henry Wills visited Portsmouth. During that trip they visited Wish St, Dickens’s second home. Dolby also records that the following bizarre incident took place, amply demonstrating Dickens’s comico-theatrical bent:

‘Returning to Southsea by another road, we suddenly found ourselves in a sort of elongated “square,” that should be called “oblong,” open at each end, such as is to be met with in Dutch towns; the houses on each side resembled a scene “set” for the comic business of a pantomime; they were of red brick, with clean windows and white window frames, while green jalousie blinds of the most dazzling description added a little to the “tone” of the place. Here the temptation to Mr. Dickens to indulge his predilections for imitating the frolics of a Clown – of the Grimaldi Flexmore, and Tom Matthews type – presented itself. The street being entirely free from people, Mr. Dickens mounted three steps leading to one of the houses, which had an enormous brass plate on its green door; and having given three raps on the doorpost, was proceeding to lie down on the upper step, clown fashion, when the door suddenly opened and a stout woman appeared, to the intense amusement of the “pantaloon” (myself) and Wills, who immediately beat a retreat in the style known in pantomime as a “rally,” followed by Mr. Dickens with an imaginary policeman after him. The wind, which was very high at the time, added to the frolic, driving Mr. Dickens’s hat before it, in the direction of the river, causing us to forget the situation and eagerly chase the hat to catch it ere the frolicsome blast drove it into the water. Then, and then only, we turned to take a parting look at the scene of action, when, to our dismay, we saw every doorstep and doorway occupied by the amused tenants of the houses. There was another stampede, which was stopped by an open drain, from which emanated an odour of anything but a pleasant character, suddenly making the party pale as ghosts, and necessitating the administration, medicinally, of course, of a strong dose of brandy-and-water at the nearest hotel’ (pp. 39– 40).

Charles Dickens (b. 7 Feb. 1812; d. 9 Jun..1870) was the most popular British novelist of all time. His works are widely read and are frequently adapted as films and TV series. Dickens published 15 novels, 5 novellas, and numerous short stories during his lifetime, as well as a host of journalistic pieces. His first short stories were published in The Morning Chronicle from 1833, and due to their popularity were published as Sketches by Boz (1836). The enormous success of the serialisation of his first novel, Pickwick Papers (1836-7) cemented Dickens’s fame. His other works include Oliver Twist (1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), Great Expectations (1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1865). He worked as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle in the early 1830s, and was editor of [Bentley’s Miscellany] (http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/bentley.html), Daily News, Household Words, and All The Year Round.

Achieving a level of literary celebrity not seen since Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, Dickens’s works were eagerly-awaited and widely-read, and his reading tours attracted enormous audiences. Stylistically his works are unique and powerful, his love of drama and the influence of the macabre stories he heard in early childhood being evident in the psychologically-heightened theatricality of which he was capable. He is nonetheless also one of the key figures in nineteenth-century realism, his work marked by a commitment to the belief in the possibility of conveying complex representations of the social life of his era. Alongside other major writers of the period, such as George Eliot, W. M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope, Dickens was capable of forging extended multiple plots, and wide casts of characters from across the social classes. His work probes the human condition and often turned a critical eye on the major social issues of the day, particularly education, crime, sanitation, disease, and poverty, but rarely engage in sustained political analyses. Instead, his social vision often turns on individuals and on a sentimental appeal to readers’ emotions. Dickens remains the most prominent figure in modern Victorian Studies within English Literature scholarship.

Dickens was strongly involved in a range of charitable causes and in 1847, with Angela Burdett-Coutts, founded the Urania Cottage home for ‘fallen women’. Dickens was involved in theatrical productions, often alongside his friend and writing colleague, Wilkie Collins, and it was during a production of The Frozen Deep (1857) that he began a relationship with the actress Ellen (Nellie) Ternan, (1839–1914) who became his mistress, and who is buried in Highland Cemetery, Portsmouth. Dickens’s relationship with his wife, Catherine Dickens (1815–79), and some of his eight children was strained and difficult. Dickens died on 09 June 1870 at Higham, Kent, leaving his final work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished.

Dickens’s Portsmouth connections are primarily related to his earliest years, during which he lived at three addresses in the city before his family left for the capital in 1815. From 1809 to 1815, Dickens’ father was a clerk in the Royal Navy pay office, Portsmouth. After leaving Portsmouth Dickens lived in London, Sheerness, Chatham, and Gad’s Hill. Dickens visited Portsmouth in 1838, 1858, and 1866, but appears to have had little affection for it, as a letter to a correspondent suggests:

‘I was born at Portsmouth, an English seaport town principally remarkable for mud, Jews, and Sailors, on the 7th of February 1812. My father holding in those days a situation under Government in the Navy Pay Office, which called him in the discharge of his duties to different places, I came to London, a child of two years old’ (The letters of Charles Dickens, Pilgrim edition, Vol. 1: 1820-1839, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. p. 465).

University of Portsmouth staff who specialise in Dickens or who have worked on Dickens projects include Dr Chris Pittard and Dr Mark Frost (English Literature), Dr Alison Habens (Creative Writing), and Professor Brad Beaven (History).

If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions in relation to the map please contact Dr Mark Frost, English Literature Department, University of Portsmouth: mark.frost@port.ac.uk