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. On a recent occasion, he said, they were informed that a respectable and active police officer had insinuated himself into the midst of an incorruptible election. This very intellectual person had reason to believe, from information he had received, that if he proceeded in a certain direction he would encounter a sage, between whom and himself a most mysterious and magnetic influence would arise if he laid his hand upon his nose. He obeyed these instructions, and in reply to the gesture alluded to, the sage observed, ‘It is all right, but there is something more’; whereupon the police officer repeated the necessarily cabalistic sign, which secured his admission into the mysterious region, and he took the chief magician into custody. If he might adapt this incident, of a not very agreeable or creditable nature, to the present very agreeable and creditable occasion, he would suggest it was all right, but there was something more. Without having applied their hands to their noses, they might be said to have placed them in grateful homage on their hearts, and also to their ears in listening to those sweet sounds produced by the musicians, and which gave delight, not only in themselves, but from the generous spirit in which they were uttered. They had used their hands in making those sounds very agreeable to the management of the fund, and in acknowledging the very admirable exposition of its claims they had heard from the Chair. In reference to the Chair, he would simply say that he hoped the ‘devil’s bird-catchers’ might always be able to lime so good a bird. He was too old a bird to be caught by chaff, whether of a celestial or infernal description. The chairman had laid the fund, under a very great obligation, and the cabalistic sign which he was advised as the next in order was, that every gentleman presented empty a wine glass in his honour. They were so fortunate in having for their president a gentleman who was the representative of a large mercantile community, and his presence afforded a graceful expression of that union of sympathy which should exist between the busy pursuits of life and its wholesome recreations. They also had in their chairman of the night one who was personally and pleasantly acquainted with the objects of their assembly. He, therefore, called up upon them to drink his health, and when they had done that, he hoped they would recollect that they were still ‘something more’. Location The location London Venue Where the speech was given London 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. 18530322 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 Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival 1853 Description An account of the resource Speech at the Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival (22 March 1853). 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 1853-03-22 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1853-03-22_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1853 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 Royal General Theatrical Fund Anniversary Festival' (22 March 1853). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1853-03-22_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1853">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1853-03-22_Speech_Royal-General-Theatrical-Fund-Anniversary-Festival-1853</a>.