- Brief description
- Plaster Bust of John Dickens by Samuel Haydon
- Label
- John Dickens, Charles' father, died in 1851. His widow, Elizabeth, thanked the sculptor for this "excellent" likeness, despite the "saddened expression...not usual with him...certainly there was never a man more unselfish". John struggled with debt his whole life, being arrested many times and sent to Marshalsea Prison in 1824, when Dickens was 12. In his adulthood, Dickens described his father as “a jovial opportunist with no money sense.” He rented a Devon cottage to keep John away from London and briefly communicated only through lawyers, though John eventually returned to London and even worked for Dickens when he started his newspaper The Daily News.
- Collection
- Object
- Object number
- DH480
- Object type
- bust
- Production person
- Haydon, Samuel
Dickens, John - Production date
- 1848
Home
/ DH480, 1927.350