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Years before Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Raven,” Charles Dickens had an actual pet raven. The endlessly influential author of A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield was a bit eccentric, as many great artists are, and in 1841 wrote a letter to a friend in which he revealed that the protagonist of his new novel would be “always in company with a pet raven, who is immeasurably more knowing than himself. To this end I have been studying my bird, and think I could make a very queer character of him.” That novel was Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty, published later the same year, and the bird in question was the beloved Grip. Grip had a habit of eating and drinking paint, alas, and died (probably as a result of doing what he loved) just a few weeks after that letter was sent. Dickens later had two more pet ravens, also named Grip.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factDickens’ 1834 short story “The Boarding-House” was published under the name Boz, as was the 1839 compilation of essays and short stories “Sketches by Boz.” The pen name came from “Moses,” Dickens’ nickname for his brother, which he pronounced closer to “Boses” and eventually shortened.
As for Poe’s famous poem, there’s reason to suggest he drew inspiration from Grip. Dickens sent a manuscript of Barnaby Rudge to Poe, who wrote back that he enjoyed it but felt that the raven should have played a larger role. “The Raven” was published just a few years later, in 1845. Dickens, for his part, was so fond of dear old Grip that he had the bird taxidermied; today it sits atop a log in the Free Library of Philadelphia, where it can be visited by the public.
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A group of ravens is known as a(n) ______.
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A group of ravens is known as a(n) unkindness.
Dickens would have hated his funeral.
To say that the author didn’t want a big funeral would be an understatement. Dickens stipulated in his will that “no public announcement be made of the time or place of my burial” and originally wanted his final resting place to be “in the small graveyard under Rochester Castle wall, or in the little churches of Cobham or Shorne,” which were near his country home. His will also dictated that he was to be “buried in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner,” which isn’t what happened. He was instead interred in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner in part at the behest of Arthur Stanley, then the Dean of Westminster, as well as Dickens’ biographer John Forster. Though only a dozen people attended his private funeral on June 14, 1870, thousands showed up to pay their respects over the next two days.
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
