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 Speeches Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speeches Description An account of the resource <h4>This collection brings 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. 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 (The Speeches of Charles Dickens [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 more than a hundred. Since this monumental work, a handful have also appeared in The Dickensian;<a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a> there are certainly more to be found, as the volume of digitised newspapers and periodicals increases, and corrections to be made to existing transcriptions. No effort to collect the speeches has been made since Fielding; this collection thus represents the most complete body of Dickens's speeches ever assembled. Dickens did not write his speeches beforehand, nor did he speak from notes. George Dolby recounted his imaginative process in 1884: <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 – 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. (Charles Dickens as I Knew Him: The Story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America, pp. 273-74)</blockquote> However, on important occasions, Dickens might personally correct transcriptions of speeches for major London newspapers like The Times. As such, these newspaper accounts are as accurate a source as we can hope to have for what Dickens said (or meant to say). 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 what are given as Dickens's words only, to avoid skewing the results, but of course we are reliant on the quality of the reporting: we recommend analysing topics, themes, quotations and concepts rather than granular detail such as prepositions, punctuation, capitalisation and the intricacies of grammar, as different newspaper accounts can vary on these points. Please <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/contact">contact us</a> with any errors, corrections, suggestions, or to contribute other uncollected speeches by Dickens. 1. These are Philip Collins, 'Some Uncollected Speeches by Dickens', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 89-99; David A. Roos, 'Dickens at the Royal Academy of Arts: A New Speech and Two Eulogies', The Dickensian 73.382 (1977): pp. 100-107; and William F. Long, 'Dickens and the Coming of Rail to Deal: An Uncollected Speech and its Context', The Dickensian 85.418 (1989): pp. 66-80. <a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Emily Middleton; Ellie-Louise Crampton; Maisie Howard; 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. He approached the next task, he said, with much the same feelings as an ex-Lord Mayor contemplated a Lord Mayor in full glory, as he could not but remember that he had once occupied the exceedingly dignified, but, if his memory served him, somewhat uncomfortable post of honour, the Chair. He might be allowed, however, to congratulate the newsvendors present on the happy accident of their pursuing their avocations in the capital of a country which gave its name to the house in which they were then assembled rather than in the capital of a neighbouring country which should be nameless. He had been told, that in the very improbable event of any one of the tightly muzzled newspapers opening its lips by any extraordinary effort, it was the intention of the paternal Government there immediately to hamstring all the newsmen. It was felt, as he had learnt on the best authority, that in having been every day the dispensers of free speech, they had rendered themselves obnoxious to the ‘cause of order’, and that ‘perfect liberty and freedom’ (by which was to be understood, of course, perfect liberty to destroy liberty) could not possibly exist as long as the newsvendors continued to run about. Not being so embarrassed themselves, however, he might perhaps be permitted to congratulate them on three grounds. In the first place, on the reappearance of their society in public. He thought it a very important thing that lights of this nature should not be hidden under bushels; but that they should sometimes shine in a cheerful atmosphere, like the present, to remind their friends that they were burning steadily. It was really important that the friends and patrons of the society should have such opportunities of meeting together, not only to encourage and stimulate one another, but to remind the public also of its modest existence, and of its very moderate appeal in behalf of a most trustworthy, useful, punctual, and reliable class of servants. In the second place he must say that, while sitting there, it had been particularly pleasant to him to observe that so small a company contained so many gentlemen who were distinguished at that fountain-head whose waters were, by the agency of the news-vendors, dispensed to all England. It was a good and right thing that the great popular artist of the time, whose humour was so delicate, so nice, and so discriminating, and whose peneil like his observation was so graceful and so informed with the sense of beauty that it was mere disparagement to call his works ‘caricatures’, should be there tonight in the person of Mr. Leech. Passing over some other friends, whom he saw both on his right hand and his left, and who very fitly and properly represented the graces of our periodical literature, it was good also that they have a separate representation of that weekly picture of the age, that weekly necessary of life with which Mr. Leech was inseparably connected – of course he meant Punch –  in the person of its editor, Mr. Lemon. It was equally gratifying and appropriate that they should have their antiquarian literature, curious research, and various knowledge, represented by Mr. Peter Cunningham; publishing enterprise, liberality, and a great deal more by Mr. Charles Knight; and printing enterprise and success on a great scale by Mr. Evans and Mr. Whiting. It was so fitting that those gentlemen should be there, and their presence seemed to be inclusive of so much, and to be such a good testimony to the worth and vigour of the institution, that he could scarcely have felt disposed to congratulate them more if they had had representatives among them from the whole public, beginning with the young gentleman at the head of the third column of The Times, who for some years past had been conjured to return to his disconsolate parents, but had never yet however had time to do so, and ending with the wonderful man who lived somewhere over at Kennington, who was still engaged in gauging the rain and measuring the wind: if they were represented, he could not congratulate them more.  Thirdly, and lastly, he congratulated them upon their chairman, of whom he would say in reference to his usefulness there that night, that no man could possibly descend from his station to be useful. However exalted his station he must ascend from it to be useful to mankind; and this was one of the greatest principles and greatest truths of the greatest history with which mankind was acquainted. On this occasion he proposed the health of their chairman with peculiar pleasure. He did so not only because of his admirable discharge of the duties of his office and his forcible exposition of the claims of their order and institution, but because he recognized in his being asked to fill the position of chairman, a peculiar significance which was most creditable to the society. It was a proof to him that they were resolved that their chairman on these occasions should mean something – that they were not disposed to look out for the commonplace aid of a mere title or a mere signpost; but that, remembering their calling, they desired to place in their Chair a worthy representative of the journals of England. Therefore it was that they had elected for their chairman a gentleman who was the editor of one of the most able, original, useful, upright, and honourable journals in the world. In doing this they had done wisely and well, and he would venture to predict that if they were always as true to themselves the public would certainly be true to them. Besides the paramount claim of the chairman on their respect, at which he had already glanced, he might add that in his earliest work Mr. Forster was the fearless historian of freedom, and the plain speaker of plain truths long industriously concealed in mere moonshine and mystification, while in his latest works he had been the gallant champion of the dignity of literature and its common cause with the people against sordid patrons, hard taskmasters, empty headed noodles, and every description of froth and foppery that could possibly surround them. He begged to propose the health of the chairman. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given Albion Tavern 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. 18520127 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 Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Second Anniversary Dinner Description An account of the resource Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Second Anniversary Dinner (27 January 1852). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1852-01-27 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1852-01-27_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Second-Anniversary-Dinner Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution Second Anniversary Dinner' (27 January 1852). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-01-27_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Second-Anniversary-Dinner">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1852-01-27_Speech_Newsvendors-Benevolent-Institution-Second-Anniversary-Dinner</a>.