MURRAY HILL — Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens!
To celebrate the famous author's cultural legacy, The Morgan Library & Museum will offer free admission to the exhibit "Charles Dickens at 200" for his birthday on Feb. 7.
The exhibit captures the writer's life with photographs, manuscripts, letters, books and illustrations dating back to his birth in 1812.
"The Morgan is home to the greatest Dickens collection in the country, so it's the ideal place to celebrate his bicentennial birthday," curator Declan Kiely said about the museum's celebration.
"In 'Charles Dickens at 200,' visitors will see favorites... through his original letters and manuscripts, and learn about some of Dickens's lesser-known interests and pursuits, such as his philanthropic work and obsession with hypnotism."
Among the highlighted artifacts of the collection is the original, autographed manuscript of "A Christmas Carol," the classic tale of the soured and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge. The grizzly character is one of many featured in the collection, which is complete with more than 50 illustrations of his work and hand-drawn caricatures of his numerous protagonists.
“It is difficult to imagine a novelist of greater importance in the English language than Charles Dickens,” said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum.
“His books are touchstones of literary history and his characters — from Tiny Tim and Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge and Uriah Heep — are some of the most vividly drawn in all of fiction."
In the exhibit, those characters come to life with the colored drawings of Oliver Twist begging for a piece of bread and Fagin in his jail cell, caricatures of Dickens and drawings of scenery the author used in many of his novels.
Other highlights include a copy of "Our Mutual Friend," a manuscript that Dickens famously retrieved in 1865 by crawling back into the wreckage of an horrific train crash.
The exhibit also shows the largest U.S. collection of Dickens' letters, in which he writes about "the plight of fallen women," his obsession with theater and his concerns about poverty.
"Charles Dickens at 200" will run at the Morgan Library & Museum on 225 Madison Avenue until February 12.
