6 August 2010

Charles Dickens in Kingston upon Hull

This building in Kingston Square, Kingston upon Hull, was built in 1830 as the Assembly Rooms, designed by R. H. Sharp under the direction of Charles Mountain. It became the New Theatre in 1939.

The plaque on the theatre wall reads: 'In this building in 1859 and 1860 the novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) gave selected readings from many of his works.'

ADDENDUM: I notice an interesting paragraph in Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life (London: Viking, 2011) in which she notes that in Hull Dickens went into 'Dixon's shop in Whitefrairgate' and, along with giving an assistant a free ticket to a local reading by him, bought six pairs of women's silk stockings (almost certainly for Ellen Ternan).

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