26 Facts About Mary Dickens

Mary "Mamie" Dickens was the eldest daughter of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine.

Mary Dickens wrote a book of reminiscences about her father, and in conjunction with her aunt, Georgina Hogarth, she edited the first collection of his letters.

Mary Dickens's godfather was John Forster, her father's friend and later biographer.

In December 1839 the Dickens family moved from 48 Doughty Street to 1 Devonshire Terrace.

Mary Dickens had taken the greatest pains and care to make the room as pretty and comfortable for his two little daughters as it could be made.

Mary Dickens was often dragged up the steep staircase to this room to see some new print or some new ornament which we children had put up, and he always gave us words of praise and approval.

Mary Dickens encouraged us in every possible way to make ourselves useful, and to adorn and beautify our rooms with our own hands, and to be ever tidy and neat.

Mary Dickens returned rapidly to his desk, wrote furiously for a few moments, and then went again to the mirror.

In 1855 Charles Mary Dickens took his two daughters to Paris.

Mary Dickens told his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts that his intention was to give Mary and Kate "some Parisian polish".

The production ran for four nights from 16 June 1855 at Tavistock House, Mary Dickens's home, followed by a single performance on 10 July at Campden House, Kensington.

In 1857 Mary Dickens was visited at Gads Hill Place by Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, who was invited for two weeks but who stayed for five.

Mary Dickens seems to have attached herself to her father with an almost blind affection; certainly, she never married and, of all the children, she was the one closest to him for the rest of his life.

Mary Dickens did not see her mother again until after her father's death in 1870.

Mary Dickens asked her father to keep some of them, but he refused, burning everything.

In 1867 Mary was asked to name and launch a new ship at Chatham Dockyard, where her grandfather John Dickens had previously worked.

Mary Dickens became a local celebrity in Kent, being the first woman there to be seen in public riding a bicycle.

Mary Dickens became the official hostess at Gads Hill Place in Kent, Dickens's country home, staying with her father for the rest of his life.

Mary Dickens never married, although it is believed she received a proposal of marriage, which she refused because her father disapproved of the suitor.

However, Charles Mary Dickens had hoped she would eventually marry and have children.

Mary Dickens had suggested to her that his friend Percy Fitzgerald would make a good husband, but Dickens later wrote, "I am grievously disappointed that Mary can by no means be induced to think as highly of him as I do".

Georgina Hogarth found living with Mary Dickens difficult, complaining that she was drinking too much.

Mary Dickens went on to write Charles Dickens By His Eldest Daughter and My Father As I Recall Him, which was posthumously published and edited by her sister, Katey.

Mary Dickens had not lived in London for nearly 18 years.

Mary Dickens died in 1896 at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, and is buried beside her sister Kate Perugini in Sevenoaks.

Mary Dickens was buried on the same day as her eldest brother Charles Dickens Jr.