The New York Public Library, Berg Collection of English and American Literature

John Dickens (1785/6-1851) and Elizabeth Dickens (1789-1863), Charles Dickens's parents.
Dickens maintained an affectionate loyalty to the parent he called "the Prodigal Father." His feelings about his mother were much more ambivalent, if not downright bitter; as she aged he could be quite dismissive, and mockingly cruel about her harmless vanities ("got up in sables like a female Hamlet").

The remarque at lower left is a portrait (after a photograph) of Dickens's nephew Harry Burnett.

The remarque at lower right is a later portrait of Elizabeth Dickens (again, after a photograph), ca. 1860.