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

A selection of Dickensiana in The New York Public Library's Berg Collection, including a mahogany writing table and brass lamp from Gad's Hill Place.

Like other Dickens relics in the Berg, the crystal inkwell and pocket compass shown here are accompanied by handwritten notes from Georgina Hogarth, Dickens's long-lived sister-in-law and trusted confidante, attesting to their "intimate association" with the novelist. One of these notes, which "Georgy" dated January 31, 1910, confirms that the lamp comes from the library at Gad's Hill. In the small box in which the note is stored, there is also a folded page, which was torn from the May 5, 1920, edition of the New York Evening Sun. On that page, now yellowed and brittle, there is this brief item: "A lamp once owned by Charles Dickens is on sale here, but the purchaser can scarcely hope to read nature by its light as Dickens read it." The card calendar, in the tin box, is stopped on June 9, the day of the great man's death in 1870.

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