Collins and Dickens - Dickens and Collins
Part of the Bicentennial Celebrations of Wilkie Collins in 2024
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Conference Details
The University of Buckingham is proud to host a two-day conference on 20-21 June 2024 exploring the dynamic between Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens to commemorate the bicentenary of Collins’s birth.
The two authors were not only great friends but also collaborated together a number of times in their work, with Collins frequently contributing to Household Words and All the Year Round. But their friendship often spilled into annoyance and rivalry, with Dickens becoming frustrated at Collins’s apparent pomposity during their trip to Italy, and Collins dismissing Dickens’s last work as ‘the melancholy work of a worn out brain.’ Critics have subsequently argued over to what extent each can be said to influence the other. We welcome paper proposals from academics, postgraduates, and enthusiasts to discuss aspects of Collins and Dickens’s works, collaborations, and influences upon one another.
The conference is supported by the Dickens Society, Wilkie Collins Society, Dickens Fellowship and Charles Dickens Museum
Travel
The conference will take place at the Vinson Centre in Buckingham in the heart of England. For drivers, free parking is available on campus. The closest train stations are Milton Keynes Central and Bicester North, both of which are connected to Buckingham via the X5 bus route. Full details of how to reach campus by car or public transport can be found here: How to get to University of Buckingham | University of Buckingham
Accomodation
There are a number of options for accommodation in Buckingham town centre catering for different budgets. Prices listed here are guides only, based on information at time of press and may go up or down.
Travelodge Buckingham
Price (one person, one night): c. £45
Distance from conference: 20 minutes walking, 5 minutes driving
Website: Travelodge Buckingham Hotel - Book Now
Premier Inn Buckingham
Price (one person, one night): c. £100
Distance from conference: 22 minutes walking, 6 minutes driving
Website: Buckingham Hotel | Premier Inn
White Hart Inn
Price (one person, one night): c. £60
Distance from conference: 8 minutes walking, 2 minutes driving
Website: The White Hart, Buckingham | Greene King Inns
The Villiers Hotel
Price (one person, one night): c. £120
Distance from conference: 7 minutes walking, 1 minute driving
Website: Villiers Hotel | Best 4* Hotel in Buckingham (villiers-hotel.co.uk)
Dickens
Society
Bursaries
Thanks to the Dickens Society, we are able to offer two £100 bursaries to postgraduates, unsalaried faculty and independent scholars presenting papers at the conference. If you wish to be considered for a bursary, please submit a one-page CV and 100-word statement alongside your paper proposal, explaining how you would benefit from speaking at the conference alongside your abstract.
No Thoroughfare: A staged reading
As part of the conference proceedings we are excited to announce we will be staging a reading of Collins and Dickens's co-authored play No Thoroughfare. Written in 1867 as an adaptation of their Christmas Number of the same name, No Thoroughfare tells the sensational tale of Walter Wilding, foundling child searching for the truth about his past, and his friend George Vendale's pursuit of the beautiful Marguerite despite the increasingly murderous machinations of her guardian Mr Obenreizer. We'll be performing the reading of this rarely-performed play on the evening of 20th June. Expect thrills and shocks in the Swiss Alps!
DRAFT PROGRAMME
Thursday 20th June
9.00am: Registration
9.45am: Opening Remarks – Pete Orford and Amy Coles
10.00–11.00am: Opening Keynote – Caroline Radcliffe, "Naturalism, Realism, and the Gothic in Wilkie Collins’ The Lighthouse"
11.00–11.30am: Tea/Coffee
11.30am–12.30pm: Panel: Monsters and Villains
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Esther Reilly ‘“What becomes of old giants?”: Exploring Giants of Extreme Stature in Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) and Wilkie Collins’s No Name (1862)’
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Cam Khaski Graglia ‘Exploring Villainy and Cliffhangers: The Collaborative Narrative of Dickens and Collins’
Chair: TBC
12.30–1.30pm: Lunch (Provided)
1.30–2.30pm: Panel: Dickens and Collins’s Working Relationship
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Marty Gould ‘The Foundling, the Fraudster, and the Fungus: No Thoroughfare’
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Paul Lewis ‘Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens – A Financial Relationship’
Chair: TBC
2.30–3.30pm: Collins or Dickens: Spirituality
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Tatiana Kontou vs Jen Cadwallader
Chair: TBC
3.30–4.00pm: Tea/Coffee
4.00–5.15pm: Panel: Gender in Collins and Dickens
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Deborah Siddoway ‘The Women in White: Collins and Dickens and the Married Women’s Property Question’
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Sara Dorsten ‘Wollstonecraft and Rousseau’s Victorian Afterlives: Negotiating Womanhood in the Works of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins’
Chair: TBC
5.00–5.30pm: Exhibition Presentation: Mutual Friends, The Adventures of Wilkie and Charles
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Emma Harper, Charles Dickens Museum
5.30–6.00pm: Pizza and Wine (Provided)
6.00–9.00pm: No Thoroughfare, a staged reading with interval for drinks
Friday 21st June
9.30–10.30am: Collins or Dickens: Sensational Figures
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Rebecca Easler vs Esther Reilly
Chair: TBC
10.30–11.00am: Tea/Coffee
11.00–12.00pm: Panel: Biography
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Wendy Parkins ‘“On terms of considerable intimacy’: Frances Dickinson’s Friendship with Wilkie Collins & Charles Dickens’
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Jeremy Parrott ‘What Happened in Doncaster on the Real “Lazy Tour”’
Chair: TBC
12.00–1.00pm: Lunch (Provided)
1.00–2.00pm: Collins or Dickens: Sex
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Jo Parsons vs Colette Ramuz
Chair: TBC
2.00–3.00pm: Panel: Theatricality
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Michael Eaton ‘Adapting The Lazy Tour for Stage’
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Emily Tucker ‘“An Agony…That Sometimes Overcomes Me”: Theatre versus Opium in The Mystery of Edwin Drood’
Chair: Elizabeth Grimshaw, The University of Buckingham
3.00–3.30pm: Tea/Coffee
3.30–4.30pm: Panel: Collins, Dickens, and Narrative Voice
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Meagan Anthony ‘Walter v. Marian: The Struggle for Narrative Control in The Woman in White’
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John Drew ‘Collins, Dickens and the “Missing Link”: Authorship Queries and Narrative Voice in Select Articles from All the Year Round’
Chair: TBC
4.30–5.30pm: Closing Keynote – Christopher Pittard, 'Collins in Cornwall: Rambles Beyond Railways.'