The University of Buckingham is proud to host a two-day conference on 20-21 June 2024 exploring the dynamic between Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens to commemorate the bicentenary of Collins’s birth.
The two authors were not only great friends but also collaborated together a number of times in their work, with Collins frequently contributing to Household Words and All the Year Round. But their friendship often spilled into annoyance and rivalry, with Dickens becoming frustrated at Collins’s apparent pomposity during their trip to Italy, and Collins dismissing Dickens’s last work as ‘the melancholy work of a worn out brain.’ Critics have subsequently argued over to what extent each can be said to influence the other. We welcome paper proposals from academics, postgraduates, and enthusiasts to discuss aspects of Collins and Dickens’s works, collaborations, and influences upon one another.
More details on the event, including accommodation, conferece programme and a staged reading of No Thoroughfare, can be found at HOME | Collins and Dickens (collins-and-dickens.com). The conference is supported by the Dickens Society, Wilkie Collins Society, Dickens Fellowship and Charles Dickens Museum
