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A tale of two statues

March 15, 2011

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The Charles Dickens statue is back in place at Centennial Park in Sydney (Photo from The Telegraph website).

If you have reveled in telling everyone who cared that the Charles Dickens statue in Clark Park was the only one in the world, these might be the worst of times.

A second Dickens statue, which disappeared some 40 years ago, has been fixed up and placed in Centennial Park in Sydney.

The author famously told his family that he wanted no public commemorations or testimonials. No statues. No buildings named for him. The Little Nell statue, commissioned in the late 19th century garnered accolades in public exhibits until settling into Clark Park in 1901 and there it remains, despite several attempts to move it to more prominent spots in the city.

The Sydney statue shows a contemplative Dickens holding a quill and scroll. The Telegraph newspaper reported last month that the statue was also commissioned in the late 19th century, but was removed in 1972 because of vandalism. Somewhere in transit the head was damaged and the statue was placed into storage until the company housing it went bankrupt.

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Dickens and Little Nell in Clark Park in 1910.

The statue went missing until Sandra Faulkner, the president of the New South Wales Charles Dickens Society, began a public search for the statue in 2006.

“I received about three calls over the course of a few days from people who didn’t want to give their names but who knew the statue and knew where it was,” she told The Telegraph.

The statue turned up a year later in a private garden about an hour outside of Sydney.

Stonemasons spent the last four years making a new head, quill, scroll and finger for the statue.

The statue was replaced last month just in time for the novelist’s 199th birthday.

1 Comments For This Post

  1. Madame Fromage Says:

    Thanks for participating in the Blue Cheese Invitational over at Madame Fromage. I am chilling a little vodka at this very moment. The pics of Annie Baum-Stein at Milk & Honey Market turned out beautifully. Cheers!

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