Cedric Charles Dickens

Cedric David Charles Dickens (24 September 1916 – 11 February 2006) was an author and businessman, and the last surviving great-grandson of British author Charles Dickens and steward of his literary legacy.

Cedric "Ceddy" Dickens was the son of Philip "Pip" Charles Dickens (1887–1964), a chartered accountant and the first secretary of ICI. He was the grandson of Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, the sixth of Dicken’s ten children, a Common Serjeant of London, and the nephew of Admiral Sir Gerald Charles Dickens. He attended Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating in Law in 1935. Following three trips to the Caribbean by banana boat, Dickens joined the British Tabulating Machine Company in 1937.

Dickens joined the RNVR on the outbreak of World War II in 1939, leaving the Royal Navy in 1946 as a First Lieutenant. While serving in Portsmouth he met his wife Elizabeth Mary Blake (1913–2008), who was serving as a WREN, and whom he married in 1948.

After leaving the Royal Navy, Dickens returned to his old firm, which eventually became ICL, and where he became Director of Communication.

He was a lifelong supporter of the Charles Dickens Museum in Holborn. He was twice President of the Dickens Fellowship, a worldwide association of people who share an interest in the life and works of Charles Dickens, first taking that position on the death of his father in 1968, and again on his retirement in 1976, when he also founded the Dickens Pickwick Club, a society with an international membership. This he kept true to the spirit of the original in The Pickwick Papers by only allowing men to join, which in 2000 led to an accusation of sexism.

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