University of Massachusetts to celebrate Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday with series of events

By Colin A. Young, Globe Correspondent

The University of Massachusetts Lowell today announced plans to celebrate Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday with seven months of events, beginning at the end of March. Dickens was born Feb. 7, 1812.

Novelist Charles Dickens (AP File Photo)

The university said the “Dickens in Lowell” program will be the largest celebration of Dickens’s birthday in New England and will be among the largest in country. The events will include performances, speakers, and an exhibit on the author’s 1842 visit to Lowell.

“After this trip we see a new vigor and complexity in his writing and a heightened social consciousness. America changed him. He began to see that his role as a pop culture hero came with great accountability,” the exhibit’s website says. “It is no coincidence that the year after he returned home, he published his iconic ‘Christmas Carol’, a tale of radical transformation and social responsibility.”

The Dickens celebration is organized by UMass Lowell English professor Diana Archibald in collaboration with the Lowell National Historical Park, the Charles Dickens Museum in London, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

The grand opening of “Dickens in Lowell” will be held March 30 at the Boott Mills Gallery at the Lowell National Historical Park. The free event will include artifacts not displayed in generations, hands-on exhibits, speakers, music, and refreshments. More information can be found at uml.edu/dickens.