Wiltshire town remembered on Dickens anniversary (From This Is Wiltshire)

Wiltshire town remembered on Dickens anniversary

10:35am Tuesday 7th February 2012 in Latest News By Craig Jones

Today's 200th anniversary celebrations of Charles Dickens’ birth will have particular significance with one Wiltshire town.

It has often been claimed that a Corsham man was inspiration for his novel The Pickwick Papers.

Stories have persisted that Dickens, born on February 7, 1812, used the name Pickwick, now a part of Corsham, to help develop the idea for the novel, but some go further and suggest he may have been inspired by local man Moses Pickwick following a visit to The Hare and Hounds.

As a youngster Mr Pickwick was discovered in a basket outside a Pickwick house and given the place name as his surname.

He grew up to run a coach business from The Hare and Hounds and it is claimed Dickens may have visited the public house while he was writing the novel as he travelled between London and Exeter to stay with relatives.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will today join celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary.

Events across the country include a wreath-laying ceremony at Dickens's grave in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, where descendants of the Victorian novelist will join representatives from the worlds of literature, film, and theatre.

The Prince will lay a wreath on Dickens's grave, where he was buried in 1870, while Ralph Fiennes, who plays Magwitch in a new Great Expectations film, will read an extract from Bleak House alongside readings from Mark Dickens, the great-great-grandson of the novelist, and biographer Claire Tomalin.

The Prince and Duchess were visiting the Charles Dickens Museum in London before the ceremony, with Gillian Anderson, Miss Havisham in the BBC's recent Great Expectations adaption, giving a reading.