Profs & Pints Baltimore: When Dickens Came to Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “When Dickens Came to Baltimore,” on the great English writer’s tumultuous relationship with our nation, with Brian Murray, professor of writing at Loyola University Maryland and author of The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dickens.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-dickens ]

‘Tis the season for readings and performances of A Christmas Carol, but its author, Charles Dickens, produced a host of other classic works and lived a life that itself represents a great story. Twice he travelled to Baltimore and other American cities, and in his relationship with our nation he experienced a change of heart akin to the transformations of old Scrooge himself.

Come to Baltimore’s Guilford Hall to learn about Dickens’ travels to—and thoughts about—the United States with Brian Murray, a scholar of Dickens and the author of two books on him.

You’ll learn how Charles Dickens first visited America in 1842, when he was only 30 but already a literary celebrity known for novels like The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby. One American admirer had assured Dickens that the trip would be “a triumph,” but six months later Dickens couldn’t wait to leave, and many Americans were happy to see him go.

What happened? While Dickens had encountered here much to his liking, he’d found Americans to be not only rude and unhygienic, but also dishonest—a response to publishers here shamelessly pirating his work. Many Americans, in turn, were put off by the dandified Dickens looking more like a “low-bred” stage actor than the dignified man of letters they imagined, with one American editorialist describing him as “no gentleman” and “a mere mercenary scoundrel.” Dickens left this country largely disillusioned, and the book in which recorded his observations, American Notes for General Circulation, created a scandal here.

When Dickens returned to the States in 1868, however, things changed for the now-ailing writer, who since his last trip had become famous for works such as A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield. He was cheered everywhere, and the 20,000 pounds he earned over the course of his travels here became a large part of his final estate. He returned the love, congratulating Americans for noticeable improvements in their civic and cultural life.

Being on hand for this talk will give you a much richer understanding of Dickens and our own nation, whose values and mores he observed as it was still forging an identity distinct from its British roots. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: Dickens as photographed by the Watkins Studio in 1861 (British Library / Creative Commons).