The Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Dunedin City Library have been overwhelmed with the response to joint exhibitions celebrating the 200th anniversary of the English novelist's birth, this year.
"Dickens is experiencing a real resurgence in popularity," rare books librarian Anthony Tedeschi said yesterday.
Dunedin has the most comprehensive public collection of Dickens' works in the southern hemisphere. The exhibition includes hand-written letters, first edition books and curiosities. The works were all donated to the library in 1956 by Dunedin publisher, author and philanthropist A.H.
(Sir Alfred) Reed (1875-1975).
"It's a fantastic collection and it's all down to A.H. Reed. Reed collected anything by, or about, Dickens he could get his hands on," Mr Tedeschi said.
The art gallery is showing a collection of 58 watercolours by English artist Paul Braddon, the pseudonym of James Leslie Crees, which Mr Tedeschi discovered last year hidden inside a set of cardboard folders in the library's Reed Collection.
A school holiday colouring competition featuring Dickensian characters is at both venues until Sunday.
