Dickens Reading The Chimes to a Group of Friends, by Dickens illustrator Daniel Maclise, an event that took place in the first week of December 1844 (see Forster 407), for the novella's forthcoming publication later in the month. Source: Forster, facing p. 406.
The scene occurred in John Forster's chambers at Lincoln's Inn's Fields, London — left to right, as labelled: John Forster, Douglas Jerrold, Laman Blanchard, Thomas Carlyle, CD, Fred Dickens, W.J. Fox, Clarkson Stanfield, Alexander Dyce, and the Rev. William Harness. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Dickens was only in town for about a week, between his European travels, but the brief visit was most rewarding. Soon after arrival, he had treated his old friend William Macready to a reading, and, like some of the later listeners shown above, he had been greatly moved. Delighted by such emotional responses, Dickens wrote to his wife Catherine on 2 December, "If you had seen Macready last night — undisguisedly sobbing and crying on the sofa, as I read — you would have felt (as I did) what a thing it is to have Power" (qtd. in Slater 231). That "Power" was evidently felt on this later occasion too, for Maclise has shown rays of light darting out of Dickens's head during his reading.
Related Material
- A favourable review of The Chimes in the 1844 Illustrated London News
- The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang An Old Year Out and a New Year In: Introduction
Image scan and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Cohen, Jane Rabb. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980.
Dickens, Charles. The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang An Old Year Out and A New Year In. Illustrated by John Leech, Daniel Maclise, Richard Doyle, and Clarkson Stanfield. London: Chapman and Hall, 16 December 1844 [Printed title-page dated "1845"].
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens Vol. I. New York: Scribner's, 1905. Internet Archive, from a copy in the library of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Web. 20 March 2026.
Slater, Michael. "'The Turning-Point of His Career': England, Italy, England, 1842-1845." Charles Dickens. Yale: Yale University Press, 2009.
Created 20 March 2026