The illustration below, from the first chapter of The Pickwick Papers shows Mr Pickwick addressing the twelve other male members of the Pickwick Club.  Maleness in any of its variety of forms was a requirement to be a Pickwickian. When thirty year old Dickens first visited America in 1842 he was already a celebrity, although I believe  the term celebrity didn’t come into the English language until 1849.  He found himself on many occasions invited to dinners in his honour given by Dickensian  Societies. These were all male affairs. On occasions the ladies were allowed to listen to the goings on  in a curtained off area.  In 1867-68 Dickens revisited America. His good friends in London saw him off with a dinner in The London Freemasons’  Hall on 2^nd November 1867. This dinner was  attended by about four hundred and fifty men.  A hundred ladies were allowed to watch from the gallery.

Of course it must be said that women were very much to the fore in the Dublin Dickens Fellowship. This Fellowship lasted from 1907 to 1919 and the advent of ‘The Troubles’.

Our Miscellany in The Teachers’ Club on Tuesday 23^rd of February at 11:30am has a lot to say about women in the life, love-life and works of Charles. It’s a celebration of his birthday on 7^th of February with a little bit of the 14^th February in for good measure.

Dickens was thirty eight in 1850. He was at the top of his power as a novelist, lionised and loved.  The next twenty years, until his death in 1870, were quite dramatic and traumatic for Dickens in terms of his relationships with the women in his life- his wife, his first love, his ‘mistress’, his daughters, the second richest woman in England after Queen Victoria,  and even Queen Victoria herself.  We will also include a few of the lesser known female characters from his works as leavening and a few men for ballast. The talk will last about an hour and will be illustrated with paintings, photographs and other visuals from his works and the times. We hope to get a few laughs.