Norvic Philatelics - GB New Stamps and Special Postmarks

Charles Dickens - 19 June 2012

Mr Bumble, Mr Pickwick and Mr Micawber - all instantly recognisable creations of Charles Dickens, one of the world’s truly great British novelists, a man born into poor circumstances who went on to change the world in which he lived thanks not just to his novels, but his campaigning journalism and philanthropy.

To celebrate the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth Royal Mail is celebrating his life and work of with ten new stamps issued on 19 June.


Charles Dickens Mr Bumble stamp.  Charles Dickens Mr Pickwick stamp.  Charles Dickens Little Marchioness Stamp.
Charles Dickens Mrs Gamp Stamp.  Charles Dickens Captain Cuttle Stamp.  Charles Dickens Mr Micawber Stamp.
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2nd Class - Mr Bumble from Oliver Twist

1st Cass - Mr Pickwick from The Pickwick Papers

77p - The Little Marchioness from The Old Curiosity Shop

87p - Mrs Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit

£1.28 - Captain Cuttle from Dombey and Son

£1.90 - Mr Micawber from David Copperfield



Charles Dickens Bicentenary miniature sheet of stamps showing scenes from Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak house, Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities.
The stamps in the miniature sheet will all be 1st class:.

Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities.


The stamps in detail

2nd Class – Mr Bumble – Oliver Twist
Mr Bumble is the parish beadle who removes the nine-year-old Oliver Twist from the baby farm and takes him to the workhouse where he is put to work picking oakham. Whenever he opens his mouth Bumble mangles whatever he tries to say.

1st Class – Mr Pickwick – The Pickwick Papers
Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, and the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. To extend his researches into the quaint and curious phenomena of life, he suggests that he and three other “Pickwickians” (Mr Nathaniel Winkle, Mr Augustus Snodgrass, and Mr Tracy Tupman) should make journeys to remote places from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief theme of the novel.

77p – The Marchioness – The Old Curiosity Shop
The Marchioness is the nickname given to the wicked Miss Brass’s maidservant by Dick Swiveller, who befriends and later marries her. In the original manuscript it is made explicit that the Marchioness is in fact the illegitimate daughter of Miss Brass, possibly by the novel’s villain Quilp, but only a suggestion of this survived in the published edition.

87p – Mrs Gamp – Martin Chuzzlewitt
Sarah or Sairey Gamp was a nurse. She was dissolute and drunk and became a notorious stereotype of the bad secular nurse in the early Victorian era, before the reforms of campaigners like Florence Nightingale. The caricature was popular with the British public and umbrellas became known as gamps after her own which was displayed with “particular ostentation”. The character was based upon a real nurse described to Dickens by his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts.

£1.28 – Captain Cuttle – Dombey and Son
Captain Edward Cuttle is left in charge of The Midshipman, Solomon Gill’s maritime instrument maker’s shop, when Soloman goes off in search of his nephew Walter Gay. Dombey’s daughter, Florence later lodges with Cuttle at The Midshipman when she runs away from her father.

£1.90 – Mr Micawber – David Copperfield
Wilkins Micawber was modelled on Dickens’s father, John Dickens, who like Micawber was incarcerated in a debtors’ prison after failing to meet his creditors’ demands. Micawber’s long-suffering wife, Emma, stands by him despite his financial exigencies that force her to pawn all of her family’s heirlooms. Micawber is hired as a clerk by the scheming Uriah Heep, who assumes wrongly that Micawber’s debts arise from his dishonesty. But working for Heep allows Micawber to expose his boss as a forger and a cheat. To start anew, Micawber and his family emigrate to Australia with Daniel Peggotty and Little Em’ly, where Micawber becomes manager of the Port Middlebay Bank and a successful government magistrate.

1st Class: Nicholas Nickleby -
Nicholas takes his cane to the bullying headmaster of Dotherboys Hall Whackford Squeers, illustration by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) from Nicholas Nickleby.

Dickens Bicentenary first day cover. 1st Class: Bleak House
- Mrs Bagnet is charmed with Mr Bucket.

1st Class: Little Dorrit -
Amy Dorrit introduces Maggy, the grand-daughter of her old nurse, to Arthur Clennam outside Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison

1st Class: A Tale of Two Cities -
Charles Darnay is arrested by the French Revolutionaries



Technical details:
The 27 x 37mm stamps were designed by Howard Brown and printed by Cartor Security Printing, Meaucé, France, in lithography. The illustrations are taken from Character Sketches from Charles Dickens, by Joseph Clayton Clarke (otherwise known as Kyd) which was originally published around 1890.
The 190 x 67mm Miniature Sheet features illustrations by Hablot Knight Brown (known as Phiz) that were used to illustrate Dickens’s novels when they were originally published.  The stamps areeach 37 x 35mm, printed by Cartor Security Printing, Meaucé, France, in lithography, perf 14 x 14½.
All images copyright Royal Mail ©2012.


Products issued - we will not be stocking these Dickens Bicentenary presentation pack.

Set of 6 stamps, miniature sheet
Presentation Pack containing set and miniature sheet 
Set of 11 stamp cards
Two First Day Covers
Coin Cover

Special first day of issue postmarks will be shown here. These cannot be obtained the date of issue; more may be added. Not to scale.

Charles Dickens FD Postmark. Charles Dickens Portsmouth FD postmark. Portsmouth non-pictorial FD postmark.
Broadstairs postmark for Charles Dickens stamps.
Portsmouth postmark showing book with 1812 2012.
Ref FD1233
Official Bureau postmark
Ref FD1234
Portsmouth official first day of issue postmark
Ref FD1234NP
Portsmouth non-pictorial official first day of issue postmark
Ref L12618
200th Anniversary Charles Dickens, Broadstairs, Kent
Ref L12623
200th Anniversary of Charles Dickens Birth, Portsmouth
Postmark showing Mr Pickwick .
Postmark showing Nicholas Nickleby.
Postmark showing book, pen and ink.
Postmark showing portrait of older Chalres Dickens.
Postmark showing a yonger Dickens.
Ref L12615 London WC1
Ref L12616 London SE11
Ref L12617 London EC4
Ref L12620 - Landport Portsmouth.
Ref M12631 Dickens Grove, Birmingham
Postmark showing Church Cross.
Postmark with text as below.
Postmark showing organisation logo.
Postmark showing a guillotine.
Postmark showing part of locomotive.
Ref M12632 Flower Festival - The Beatles, Dickens Exhibition, All Saints Church, Walsoken, Wisbech
Ref L12621 Charles Dickens Bicentenary, A Tale of Two Cities Paris London - GBFDC Association London
Ref L12622 Rochester & Chatham Dickens Fellowship, Swiss Chalet Appeal, Rochester
Ref L12619 200th Anniversary of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, London W2
Ref L12614
Charles Dickens, Staplehurst, Kent



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This page updated 13 June 2012


2012 stamp issues
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January
5 Olympic & Paralympic Definitives
10 Roald Dahl (author)
20 Year of the Dragon Smilers
February
2 House of Windsor & Saxe-Coburg
6 Diamond Jubilee MS & definitive
23 Britons of Distinction
24 Pictorial Faststamps - Sheep
March
8 Classic Locomotives of Scotland MS
20 World of Comics
April
10 A-Z of the United Kingdom part 2, M-Z
10 RMS Titanic Commemorative Sheet
24 Pictorial Faststamps - Pigs
25 Machin & Country Defins
25 Diamond Jubilee Defins 2
May
1 James Bond Commem sheet
15 Design Classics, Great British Fashion
24 Union Flag Pictorial Faststamp
31 HM The Queen Diamond Jubilee
June
18 Exhibition Generic Sheet
19 Charles Dickens
27 Olympic Games Generic Smiler
27 Scotland 1st & 2nd reprint
July
27 Welcome to the London 2012 Olympic Games
From 27 Olympic Gold Medals
August
27 Retail booklet
29 Welcome to the London 2012 Paralympic Games
September
27 Memories of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games
28 Pictorial Faststamps - Cattle
October
Retail booklet
Commemorative Sheet
 -- World of Dinosaurs ->2013
16 Space Science
November
8 Christmas

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