Presentation copy ~ inscribed by the poet Samuel Rogers to Mrs. Dickens

ROGERS, SAMUEL. Poems.

London, Edward Moxon, 1839. Octavo. 

A later edition inscribed: “To Mrs. Dickens / with his best regard / from the author,” and bearing bookplate reading “From the Library of Charles Dickens, Gadshill Place, June, 1870”

Bound in contemporary straight-grained morocco with gilt rules to the covers; spine elaborately gilt with floral designs in five compartments and the title in a sixth. The outer and inner edges of the covers are gilt with a floral design. A couple of slight scratches to gilt fore-edge, else extremely fine. A.E.G.  The text block very clean without the usual foxing. Protected in an elegant morocco box, gilt-titled to spine.

A renowned poet and art collector, Rogers was a leading figure in London literary circles.  Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) was the first person of literary note to acknowledge Dickens’s genius, and it was at his famous breakfasts that Dickens first met with the intellectual and literary luminaries of the age.

In 1840 Dickens wrote to Rogers asking permission to make him the dedicatee of Master Humphrey’s Clock:  “I will not tell you how many strong and cordial feelings move me to this enquiry; for I am unwilling to parade, even before you, the sincere and affectionate regard which I seek to gratify”.  Dickens dedicated his serialized novel Master Humphrey’s Clock and the collected edition of The Old Curiosity Shop to his mentor, Samuel Rogers:

Let me have my Pleasures of Memory in connection with this book, by dedicating it to a Poet whose writings (as all the world knows) are replete with generous and earnest feeling; and to a Man whose daily life (as all the world does not know) is one of active sympathy with the poorest and humblest of his kind.                                          Your faithful friend, Charles Dickens.

A special association copy: Catherine ‘Kate’ Dickens was also well acquainted with Samuel Rogers: they corresponded with each other and attended each other’s dinner parties, “those delightful entertainments so much sought” attended by Mrs. Gaskell, the Carlyles and other such literary celebrities of the day. 

In February 1835, Catherine Hogarth celebrated Charles Dickens’s twenty-third birthday at his London lodgings. Only nineteen years old, she described the party and its host to a cousin. ‘Mr. Dickens improves very much on acquaintance,’ she wrote, and is ‘very gentlemanly and pleasant.’ Little more than one year later, in April 1836, they married.

In 1839 – the year this volume of poems was presented to Catherine “Kate” Dickens – the couple moved from 48 Doughty Street (now the Dickens Museum) to a larger house at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Regent’s Park. They had married in 1836, the year Charles Dickens’s prospects were transformed by the appearance of Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick Papers.  By 1839 Catherine had given birth to three of their ten children.

The excellent 2011 exhibition The Other Dickens: Discovering Catherine re-examined the life of Catherine Dickens.  The venue was the Charles Dickens Museum and their overview of the exhibition was as follows:

This partnership would shape Catherine’s life forever. She and Dickens would live together for twenty-two years. They would travel to North America and reside on the Continent as well as in England. Between 1837 and 1852 they would have ten children, two born at 48 Doughty Street, which now forms part of the Charles Dickens Museum. In 1858, Dickens decided to separate from Catherine. This event, and Dickens’s rewriting of it (and the couple’s marriage), would shape how Catherine would be seen up until her death in 1879, and in the following decades.

In 2016 working with Professor Lillian Nayder, author of Catherine’s 2011 biography, the Museum presented an exhibition titled The Other Dickens: Discovering Catherine. Aiming to debunk the myths surrounding her, the show explored Catherine on her own terms. Since this landmark exhibition, we have aimed to do just that, introducing Catherine’s voice into our displays, collections and catalogue. In 2018 the Museum acquired three personal artefacts owned by Catherine.