RECORDING: Symposium in honour of Emeritus Professor Michael Slater MBE

On 6 October 2023, the Dickens Fellowship hosted a symposium in honour of Emeritus Professor Michael Slater MBE at Senate House in London. The live-streaming of the event on Zoom encountered a number of technical difficulties and these are, unfortunately, reflected in the audio and visual quality of the recording made. It is available here in three parts.

Part 1 (audio only) contains the welcome by Professor Emerita Catherine Waters, current President of the Dickens Fellowship, followed by Emeritus Professor Andrew Sanders talking about Michael Slater as Honorary Editor of the Dickensian.

Part 2 begins with a tribute from Emeritus Professor Toru Sasaki from the Japan branch of the Dickens Fellowship, followed by Pat Vincy from the Philadelphia branch, Anita Fernandez-Young from the Nottingham branch and Dr Christine Corton from the Cambridge branch.

The opening sentence of Professor Toru Sasaki’s talk was as follows: Once upon a time, back when my hair was completely black, Michael spoke to me about a certain Japanese Dickensian, who was visiting him in London--a morose chap, rather, so you can imagine Michel telling me about a humorless man in his humorous fashion. This Japanese scholar, according to Michael, all of a sudden, asked him: ... And then it leads to the beginning of the video.

Part 3 begins with Dr Tony Williams speaking about Michael Slater as President of the Fellowship and Chair of the Trustees of the Dickens House Museum. This is followed by Emeritus Professor Michael Hollington on Michael Slater and the history of Dickens criticism; Professor Emerita Jenny Hartley on Michael Slater as biographer; Emeritus Professor John Drew on Michael Slater as Editor of the Journalism and Everyman editions; and Emeritus Professor Robert Patten on sixty years of friendship, 1963-2023. Other contributions from the audience then follow, before the symposium concludes with readings of Dickens by Michael Slater and Emeritus Professor Malcolm Andrews, and a final word from Michael himself.

As we were unable to show the slides prepared by John Drew to accompany his talk, they can be viewed in PDF here.