“My Dearest Kate” is the story of Catherine Dickens and her turbulent marriage to and separation from Charles Dickens, seen through letters they exchanged. Originally written and performed by Ellie Dickens in 1983, as a one-woman play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and touring throughout Britain, America and Australasia, she has given her consent for My Dearest Kate to be adapted into this entertaining dramatic two-actor production, and the show comes to Kingsland Methodist Chapel on Saturday, May 27 .

Catherine Thompson Hogarth met Charles John Huffam Dickens in 1834 when her father, having taken a job as a music critic on The Morning Chronicle, befriended Charles, also working as a journalist on the paper, and invited him to the Hogarth family home in Kensington. They became engaged in 1835 and were married the next year in St. Luke's Church, Chelsea on April 2nd, the same year he began serialising his first novel, “Pickwick Papers“.

After 22 years of marriage, Catherine and Dickens were legally separated. He did not approve of Catherine's lack of energy for which he had no sympathy despite the fact that the woman had had over twenty pregnancies. She and Charles had 10 children, though their daughter Dora, their ninth child, only lived for eight months. Charles forced Catherine to leave their home, unjustly alleging that she was mentally disordered and unfit as a wife and mother. He resented he had so many children to support and seemed to blame her alone for having had ten children. They never divorced and Charles bought Catherine a London town-house and gave her £400 per annum.

On her deathbed in 1879 she gave her collection of Dickens' letters to their daughter Kate (Perugini), whose wedding she had not been allowed to attend, instructing her to "...give these to the British Museum, that the world may know he loved me once". Catherine died of cancer on 22nd November 1879 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, North London with little Dora who died of convulsions in 1851.

See My Dear Kate at Kingsland Methodist Chapel in North Road on Saturday at 7.30pm. For tickets, call 01568 708992 or purchase at Kingsland Village Shop and Post Office.