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https://dickenssearch.com/files/original/6/On_Thackeray_Going_to_America/1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America.pdf
0c673e9f29834f23e4f1fb2fc682d340
Dublin Core
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Title
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Speeches
Identifier
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speeches
Description
An account of the resource
<h4>This collection (still in development) will bring together Dickens’s collected and uncollected speeches, making an under-explored body of work searchable for the first time. </h4>
Dickens made more than a hundred speeches between 1837 and 1870 at events ranging from charitable dinners and award ceremonies to banquets in his honour or brief words of thanks before a public reading. In these speeches, the author touched on topics including his own life and professional development as well as other subjects such as politics, education, literature, public health and the development of the railway.<br /><br />Efforts to collect Dickens’s speeches prior to 1960 were incomplete at best, and misleading and fragmentary at worst. John Camden Hotten’s collection of speeches, begun without the author’s consent (although he never responded to Hotten’s letters, Dickens did begin efforts to block their publication) and published together with a hastily-compiled biography shortly after the author’s death, remained the primary collected version of the speeches until the Nonesuch Dickens of 1938-39 (a limited print run). Finally, K. J. Fielding brought all known speeches together in 1960, correcting shoddy transcriptions by Hotten using contemporary newspaper accounts, and nearly doubling the total number of speeches attributed to Dickens (<em>The Speeches of Charles Dickens</em> [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]): Hotten had only featured the text of 56 speeches, the Nonesuch edition of the speeches provided an additional nine, and Fielding presented 115 in total. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in <em>The Dickensian</em>;<sup><a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a></sup> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases.<br /><br />Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884:<br />
<blockquote>[S]upposing the speech was to be delivered in the evening, his habit was to take a long walk in the morning, during which he would decide on the various heads to be dealt with. These being arranged in their proper order, he would in his 'mind's eye,' liken the whole subject to the tire of a cart wheel <span>–</span> he being the hub. From the hub to the tire he would run as many spokes as there were subjects to be treated, and during the progress of the speech he would deal with each spoke separately, elaborating them as he went round the wheel; and when all the spokes dropped out one by one, and nothing but the tire and space remained […] his speech was at an end. (<em>Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America</em>, pp. 273-74)</blockquote>
However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like <em>The Times</em>. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say).<br /><br />Our Transcription field will only include words attributed directly to Dickens rather than third-person reports or paraphrases of his speeches. Where only such reports exist, we will provide the text in the 'Summary' field. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results.<br /><br />We are beginning this collection with the author's uncollected speeches, drawing text from newspaper reports and eye-witness transcriptions. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens.<br /><br /><sup id="fn1">1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', <em>The Dickensian </em>73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', <em>The Dickensian </em>73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', <em>The Dickensian</em> 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a></sup>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Emily Bell; Adam Woods
Speech
Summary
Occasionally speeches are summarised in sources in third person. Include that here, so that everything in the text transcription is only Dickens's words.
<p>‘Dickens’s speech gave a happy expression to the spirit that animated all, telling Thackeray not alone how much his friendship was prized by those present, and how proud they were of his genius, but offering him in the name of the tens of thousands absent who had never touched his hand or seen his face, life-long thanks for the treasures of mirth, wit, and wisdom within the yellow-covered numbers of <em>Pendennis </em>and <em>Vanity Fair</em>.’</p>
<p>‘The chairman rose, amid furiously friendly applause; he had, he said, decided that it would be the wish of everybody to avoid toasts and speech-making, and he therefore went at once to the one object of the assemblage – to propose the health of Mr. Thackeray.’</p>
<p>‘Mr. Dickens made a neat speech – a very neat speech, in his polished actor-like manner, which has but this defect, that they countenance never swerves with the words – that his superbly brilliant eye stares at you all the time with the fixed clearness of an Argand lamp. He was not fulsome in his compliments to his friend – his highest praise was, that Mr. Thackeray was “no ordinary man,” and he avoided, in praising a novel writing, the laudation of novel-writing, with great tact, merely saying, that he was, with his whole soul, devoted to, and proud of that art, and declaring that Thackeray was an honour, in his life, as in his writings, to that art (which is not altogether too recklessly true). Dexterously he referred to Thackeray’s visit to America, for the purpose of paying a compliment to the Americans, who, he said, whatever motes might be noticed in their keen optics, were to be recognized as a high-spirited, advancing, intellectual, generous race, – the which people who remembered the foolish American notes, cheered as a recantation deserves to be cheered. Mr. Dickens delivered himself in a finished manner of some jokes. The table at which we were dining was horse-shoed in shape; and this table was allegorically or metaphorically pitched at Mr. Thackeray, and nailed on to him by way of securing good luck. Then, it was remembered, that though he went away by himself, he left his creations behind, which was a comfort: - “Jeames” could not act as his servant, and the “snobs” would continue to amuse us. And so on; the wit not magnificent, but sufficient; and so far so good – the speech answered its purpose; and when D., before sitting down, put his little hand into T.’s big hand, and shook T. solemnly, and even pathetically, the room rang with applause – it was an historical picture which Tenniel was taking a note of.’</p>
'Mr. Dickens rose and said that he would make no more speeches; speeches were a nuisance, and he called on somebody for a song.'
'Mr. Dickens responded, to the effect that he would not make any more speeches, and called on another (idiot) for a song, which was more frightful than the last...'
Location
The location
London
Venue
Where the speech was given
London Tavern
Publication Type
E.g. newspaper/serial
Biography
Publication
The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable)
The Life of Charles Dickens
Ngram Date
Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101.
18551011
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
On Thackeray Going to America
Description
An account of the resource
Speech given at the London Tavern ahead of William Makepace Thackeray going to America (11 October 1855).
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dickens, Charles
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Forster, John.<em> The Life of Charles Dickens</em>. Ed. J. W. T. Ley. London: Cecil Palmer, 1928. p. 575.
<em>Chester Chronicle</em> (20 October 1855).
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1855-10-11
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Speech
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
<span>Dickens, Charles. 'On Thackeray Going to America' (11 October 1855). </span><em>Dickens Search</em><span>. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. </span><a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1855-10-11_Speech_On_Thackeray_Going_to_America</a><span>.</span>