Ever the Best of Friends

Dear Friends,

It was great seeing so many of our fellow Dickens lovers in person this summer at the 2023 Dickens Universe. The full splendor of the beautiful UC Santa Cruz campus was on display, and we were blessed with warm weather for our outdoor meals while the Stevenson dining hall was being refurbished. The full panoply of Universe activities was on tap for the first time since the pandemic, including a rousing Adam Abraham farce parodying A Tale of Two Cities.

The Dickens Universe is more than a premier scholarly conference focusing on Dickens’s work in its 19th-century global context. It’s also a fun, joyous summer camp when lay readers and Dickens devotees of all ages and from all walks of life join leading scholars for a week of total immersion in the world of a specific Dickens novel (Great Expectations is coming in 2024), Victorian teas and dances, informal parties, movie nights, auctions of Dickensian collectibles, and much more.

If you are like me, you’ll put attending the Universe every year as a top priority when making any plans for the summer.

As President of the Friends of the Dickens Project board and as a fellow attendee at the Dickens Universe for the past twelve years, I write to ask for your financial support. The Friends are critical to ensuring funding for the Universe and the other activities of the Dickens Project, including outreach to high school students and support for graduate students.

Your generosity keeps the Universe and the Dickens Project going. With no funding from the university, the Project must be completely self-supporting. The cancellation of two in-person Universes and the inability of several universities to maintain their membership in its research consortium due to the pandemic have significantly depleted the Project’s financial resources. We need your help urgently to preserve the Universe and continue the Dickens Project’s other flagship programs.

You can help now in several ways:
• Make a one-time donation
• Give a recurring monthly or annual contribution–the most helpful form of giving, since it creates a predictable and stable flow of income for the Project

This year, the Friends will again match dollar-for-dollar all gifts to the Dickens Project up to $25,000, so anything you can give will have double the impact.

You have our heartfelt gratitude for participating in the Universe and keeping the Dickens Project alive and flourishing.

With warm regards,
Michael Stern

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