A remarkable discovery by Portico Library volunteer Rebecca Lamb has revealed that Charles Dickens signed the Library’s Strangers’ Book in May 1844 — confirming that one of the world’s most celebrated novelists once stepped inside Manchester’s oldest subscription library.
Dickens’s name appears alongside that of prominent local members and dates from his visit to Manchester to see his sister, Fanny Burnett. Contemporary press reports and his biographer (and friend) John Forster confirm that Dickens was in the city at that time.
This new evidence places him inside the Portico itself. Member Dr Matthew Alexander Eason Wilkinson signed him in to the library on 23 May 1843. Wilkinson himself became a prominent doctor in Manchester and President of the Cheshire and Lancashire branch of the British Medical Association.
The Wilkinson family were wealthy progressives and supporters of women’s suffrage – one of his daughters Fanny Rollo Wilkinson, became the first professional female landscape gardener
