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The New York Public Library, Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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The printed itinerary of Dickens's reading tour for the autumn of 1858; Georgina Hogarth's copy, with her annotations. On July 22 Dickens read in London for the last time that summer; after a mere 10 days rest, he began this ambitious tour, which would take him throughout the English provinces, Scotland, and Ireland, beginning with a performance in Clifton on August 2 and closing in Brighton, more than three months later, on November 13. Altogether he was scheduled to read eighty-seven times, on some days giving both a matinée and an evening performance. Georgina's annotations include memoranda about Dickens's arduous schedule ("Sat: London. Sun: Gad's Hill"), much of which involved hours of often hideously uncomfortable travel by rail; his children ("Plorn & I go to London"); and at bottom, below the listing of the final engagement at Brighton, the exclamation, "The End.--Thank God!" Dickens's youngest child, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, nicknamed "Plorn," was six years old at the time.
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