'...and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better': Name-dropping in obituaries: The cult of knowing Dickens

Victorian obituaries often read as a list of who knew who. In memorialising loved-ones, families often valorised their life through their connectedness to the ‘great and the good’. By analysing obituary columns in the UK newspapers, we can begin to understand what ‘knowing Dickens’ signified and understand more about the networks and aspirations of those who knew him, as well as map the geographical reach of Dickens’ wider social network. By comparing these claims of connectedness against Dickens correspondence and autobiographical writing and using genealogical research to piece together location and opportunity, a greater understanding of the measure of social distance as well as the claims
of connectedness can be derived. Furthermore, a picture of the perceived ‘importance’ of Dickens to the lives of others will be discussed by looking at the positioning of Charles Dickens’s name within the obituaries, and by considering which other contemporary ‘celebrities’ are ranked before or after him in the text. The social standing, profession, and gender of the subject of the obituaries will be assessed to understand why knowing Dickens resonated within the Victorian psyche but also the idea that Dickens’s reputation has been extended not only by the popularity of his works, literary scholarship, publishers, libraries and the education system, but also by small acts of remembrance in newspapers and family recollections.