Charles Dickens' Amateur Theatrical Company

In 1847, the London and Shakespeare Committee purchased Shakespeare's House, in Stratford-upon-Avon and wanted to appoint a suitable person to administer the birthplace. Charles Dickens, who was a member of the Committee, formed a touring amateur theatrical troupe in 1848 for the purpose of staging amateur theatricals in order to raise funds for an endowment for the curatorship of the house and then to install the recently bankrupted dramatist Sheridan Knowles as the first incumbent. Dickens had previously staged a benefit performance for Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), English essayist and poet. Two productions in aid of the were held at the Haymarket in London and subsequently at Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dickens took full responsibility for running the tour in the provinces and making all the administrative and publicity arrangements.

There were two performances in Birmingham, the first on 6 June of Jonson's 'Everyman in his Humour' and Mrs Inchbald's farce 'Animal Magnetism' at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham and to which this collection relates.

No appointment was in fact made to the position as curator of Shakespeare's birthplace, which became the responsibility of the Stratford Shakespeare Committee, but the company made a donation to Knowles from the profits of the tour.

Source: Research Libraries Bulletin Number 7, Spring 2000, 8-12