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2012 Stamp Issues
5th Jan 2012 - Olympics and Paralympics Stamp Booklet
Tues 10th Jan 2012 - Roald
Dahl
20th January 2012, year of the Dragon, Smilers Sheet.
Thurs 2nd Feb 2012- The
House of Windsor
6th February - Diamond
Jubilee
Thurs 23rd Feb 2012 - Britons of Distinction
Thurs 8th March 2012 - Classic Locomotives of Scotland
Tuesday 20th March 2012 - Comics
Tuesday 10th April 2012 - UK A-Z Part 2
Tues 15th May 2012 - Great British Fashion
Thurs 31st May 2012 - The Diamond Jubilee
Tues 19th June 2012 - Charles Dickens
Tues 27th July 2012 - Olympic Games Welcome
Wed 29th August 2012 - Paralympic Games Welcome
Thurs 27th Sept 2012 - Olympic & Paralympic Games Memories
Tues 16th Oct 2012 - Dinosaurs
Tues 30th Oct 2012 - Space Science
Tues 6th Nov 2012 - Christmas
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Charles Dickens
Issue Date - 19th June 2012
The Mint Stamps feature Mr. Bumble, Mr. Pickwick, The Marchioness, Mrs. Gamp, Captain Cuttle and Mr. Micawber; drawn in around 1890 by the artist Joseph Clayton Clark, also known as Kyd.
Acknowledgements
Mr Bumble, Mr Pickwick, The Marchioness, Mrs Gamp, Captain Cuttle and Mr Micawber illustrations from Character Sketches from Charles Dickens, c.1890 (colour litho), Joseph Clayton Clarke (Kyd) (fl. 1883–94)/ Private Collection/© Look and Learn/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Issue Products
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Stamp Set
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
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Miniature Sheet
The stamps in the miniature sheet will all be 1st class:.
Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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£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.
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£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.
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1st Class: Nicholas Nickleby -
Nicholas takes his cane to the bullying headmaster of Dotherboys Hall Whackford Squeers, illustration by Hablot Knight Browne from Nicholas Nickleby.
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1st Class: Bleak House -
Mrs Bagnet is charmed with Mr Bucket.
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1st Class: Little Dorrit -
Amy Dorrit introduces Maggy, the grand-daughter of her old nurse, to Arthur Clennam outside Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison
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1st Class: A Tale of Two Cities -
Charles Darnay is arrested by the French Revolutionaries
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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 are each 37 x 35mm, printed by Cartor Security Printing, Meaucé, France, in lithography, perf 14 x 14½.
All images copyright Royal Mail ©2012.
A copy of the Special Handstamps for this issue can be viewed here.
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