Charles Dickens Connections in Kensal Green Cemetery, London

The grave of Robert Bell (1800–67) is now illegible. He was born in Cork, Ireland, and moved to London where he first worked as an editor for the weekly Atlas, and later as a journalist. He edited a large number of books of English poets, and was a friend of Dickens.

'SAMUEL LOVER

BORN FEB. 24, 1797.

DIED JULY 6, 1868.'

Lover was an Anglo-Irish songwriter and novelist who founded Bentley's Magazine with Dickens. He is probably best remembered for his novel Handy Andy (links to both volumes below).

Famously, John Forster (1812–76) wrote the biography of his friend Dickens, and also wrote biographies of Swift and Goldsmith. His bequest to the country was his library of 18,000 books, which included the manuscripts of all of Dicken's novels except A Christmas Carol. Dickens probably modelled Podsnap in Our Mutual Friend on him.

'DWARKANAUTH TAGORE,

OF CALCUTTA,

OBIIT 1ST. AUGUST 1846.'

'Tagore was the grandfather of the great Indian poet Rabindranath

Tagore (1861–1941), and met both Dickens and Thackeray when visiting London.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to include this one of William Harrison Ainsworth (1805–82), who for a time lived in nearby Kensal Lodge, and had both Dickens and Thackeray as guests.

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Samuel Lover – Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life: Volume One
Samuel Lover – Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life: Volume Two
William Harrison Ainsworth, Manchester

William Harrison Ainsworth, Manchester

'WM. HARRISON AINSWORTH

1805-1883

NOVELIST

BORN IN A HOUSE

WHICH STOOD

ON THIS SITE'

This plaque commemorating William Harrison Ainsworth's birth is on the National Westminster Bank building,  King Street, central Manchester.

His early 'Newdigate' novels (Rockwood (1834) and Jack Sheppard (1839)) romanticized highwaymen, and were satirized by William Thackeray in Catherine (1839–40). He wrote 39 (mainly historical) novels, among which the most noted perhaps are The Lancashire Witches (1848), Old St Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire (1841), and Windsor Castle (1843).