A lifelong collector of Charles Dickens manuscripts and material and an expert in his own right, Daniel Ryan was nonetheless puzzled by his newest treasure. He had obtained a letter signed by all of Dickens’ living children related to the settlement of their father’s estate. He contacted, David Parroissien, editor of The Dickens Quarterly, inviting him to visit and view his collection the next time Parroissien would return to New England. That eventual meeting brought Dan and his wife Alice to Worcester to learn more about WPI’s own Dickens Collection.
After a day spent touring facilities, meeting with faculty, interviewing students, and spending time in the WPI Archives and Special Collections, Dan and Alice announced that they had chosen WPI as the recipient of their collection, which Parrossien and WPI literature professor Joel J. Brattin acknowledge as among the most impressive privately-held collections in the world.
Dan and Alice were struck by how WPI blended both a rigorous technical curriculum with a strong focus in the humanities and arts to produce students with the capacity to change the world using the moral lessons imparted by the thorough study of history and literature.
Their gift, in addition to the prior generosity of Robert D. Fellman combined with a truly cross-campus collaborative effort, places WPI as a world-class repository of material related to the life, world, and works of Charles Dickens, the most celebrated novelist in western literature. Dan’s alma mater, Yale, features an extensive Dickens collection but the Ryans understood that WPI was better positioned to ensure their collection would support our curriculum and serve as a catalyst to expand our ambitions beyond New England.
In addition to providing the works for use in faculty research and student learning, WPI intends to digitize and disseminate each of Dickens’ novels in their original format as part of our digital exhibition, Project Boz. Named for Dickens’s early pen name, this site will be the only one of its kind, presenting authentic digital surrogates to enhance opportunities for global learning.
In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens on June 9, 1870, Gordon Library’s new exhibition, Illustrating Every-day Life and Every-day People: Dickens and his Artists, will explore the artists who illustrated Dickens’s novels and Christmas books.
The exhibit will be on view in the Gladwin Gallery, located on the ground floor of the Gordon Library, from September 2019 through August 2020. The exhibit will be open to all members and friends of the WPI community. Dickens developed close relationships with his illustrators and was intimately involved in choosing and shaping the visual images used in his works. Highlights of the exhibit will include materials from the Robert D. Fellman collection on Charles Dickens, as well as unique items from the collection of Daniel and Alice Ryan.
Article written by Gordon Library Archivist Arthur Carlson.