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 Location The location Stevenage Venue Where the speech was given Knebworth 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. 18650729 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. Ladies and Gentlemen, It was said by a very sagacious person, whose authority I am quite sure my friend of many years will not impugn, notwithstanding he was named Augustus Tomlinson, and was the guide, philosopher, and friend of Paul Clifford – it was said by that remarkable man. ‘Life is short, and why should speeches be long?’ An aphorism so sensible under all circumstances, and particularly in these circumstances, with this delicious weather and such charming gardens near at hand, and the rather because my friend’s remarks have been, as his speeches always are, quite exhaustive of the subject in hand, and not the least exhaustive of his audience. In thanking him for the toast which he has done me the honour – an honour I very much prize – of associating my name, allow me to correct an omission which my friend has fallen into, and to assure you that these houses in question would never have been built, or could never have been built, but by his zealous and invaluable co-operation, and also that the pleasant labour out of which they arose would certainly have lost one of its greatest charms and one of its strongest impulses, if it had lost his ever ready sympathy with that class in which he has risen to the foremost rank, and of which he is the brightest ornament. Having said this much as simply due to my friend, I can only say on behalf of my associates, that the ladies and gentlemen whom we shall invite to occupy these houses, will never be placed in them as being under any social disadvantage. They will be invited to accept them as artists receiving a mark of respect, and assurance of high consideration, from some of their fellow workers. They will be invited to occupy them as artists who, we hope, will often exercise their calling within those walls for the general advantage; and they will also claim, on equal terms, the hospitality of their generous neighbour. Having thanked you on behalf of my brothers and sisters – for ladies became members of the Guild – and myself, I am sure I may take the liberty of giving utterance to your feelings not less than to my own in proposing the health, long life, and prosperity of our distinguished host. You all know very well that when the health, life, and beauty now overflowing this hall shall have fled out of it, and out of existence, crowds of people not yet born will come here to see where he lived and wrote. Setting aside the orator and statesman – for happily we have no party here but this agreeable party – setting aside all this, you know very well that this is the home of a very great man whose connexion with Hertfordshire every other county in England will envy for many long years to come. You know very well that when this house is at its darkest and emptiest, you can make it when you please brightest and fullest by peopling it with the creatures of his brilliant fancy. Let us all wish together that there may be many more of them – the more there are the better we shall be, and, as he always excels himself, the better they will be. Now ladies and gentlemen, pray listen to their praises and not mine, and let them, and not we, propose his health. 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 After the Opening of the Guild of Literature and Art Houses Description An account of the resource Speech after the Opening of the Guild of Literature and Art Houses (29 July 1865). 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 1865-07-29 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1865-07-29_Speech_After-the-Opening-of-the-Guild-of-Literature-and-Art-Houses 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 after the Opening of the Guild of Literature and Art Houses' (29 July 1865). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1865-07-29_Speech_After-the-Opening-of-the-Guild-of-Literature-and-Art-Houses">https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1865-07-29_Speech_After-the-Opening-of-the-Guild-of-Literature-and-Art-Houses</a>. Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. Ladies and Gentlemen, It was said by a very sagacious person, whose authority I am quite sure my friend of many years will not impugn, notwithstanding he was named Augustus Tomlinson, and was the guide, philosopher, and friend of Paul Clifford – it was said by that remarkable man. ‘Life is short, and why should speeches be long?’ An aphorism so sensible under all circumstances, and particularly in these circumstances, with this delicious weather and such charming gardens near at hand, and the rather because my friend’s remarks have been, as his speeches always are, quite exhaustive of the subject in hand, and not the least exhaustive of his audience. In thanking him for the toast which he has done me the honour – an honour I very much prize – of associating my name, allow me to correct an omission which my friend has fallen into, and to assure you that these houses in question would never have been built, or could never have been built, but by his zealous and invaluable co-operation, and also that the pleasant labour out of which they arose would certainly have lost one of its greatest charms and one of its strongest impulses, if it had lost his ever ready sympathy with that class in which he has risen to the foremost rank, and of which he is the brightest ornament. Having said this much as simply due to my friend, I can only say on behalf of my associates, that the ladies and gentlemen whom we shall invite to occupy these houses, will never be placed in them as being under any social disadvantage. They will be invited to accept them as artists receiving a mark of respect, and assurance of high consideration, from some of their fellow workers. They will be invited to occupy them as artists who, we hope, will often exercise their calling within those walls for the general advantage; and they will also claim, on equal terms, the hospitality of their generous neighbour. Having thanked you on behalf of my brothers and sisters – for ladies became members of the Guild – and myself, I am sure I may take the liberty of giving utterance to your feelings not less than to my own in proposing the health, long life, and prosperity of our distinguished host. You all know very well that when the health, life, and beauty now overflowing this hall shall have fled out of it, and out of existence, crowds of people not yet born will come here to see where he lived and wrote. Setting aside the orator and statesman – for happily we have no party here but this agreeable party – setting aside all this, you know very well that this is the home of a very great man whose connexion with Hertfordshire every other county in England will envy for many long years to come. You know very well that when this house is at its darkest and emptiest, you can make it when you please brightest and fullest by peopling it with the creatures of his brilliant fancy. Let us all wish together that there may be many more of them – the more there are the better we shall be, and, as he always excels himself, the better they will be. Now ladies and gentlemen, pray listen to their praises and not mine, and let them, and not we, propose his health.