The Dickens Newsletter, Melbourne, founded in October 1982, is published monthly except in January.

It is completely funded by the generous bequest of Mr Ormond Butler, a long-standing and passionate member of the MDF until his death in 2012.

The hard copy of all issues from 1982-2018 is available for viewing in the State Library of Victoria.

The Newsletter Archive, beginning in 2019, is available to members:

• in hard copy at the monthly meetings (optional gold coin donation to our chosen charity)
• electronically via email
• via password protected links on our website

The password is issued when you join or renew membership (1st September to 31st August the following year).

Access the 2023 newsletter archive for the Book of the Year: Pickwick Papers
Access the 2022 newsletter archive for the Book of the Year: Bleak House
Access the 2021 newsletter archive for the Book of the Year: A Tale of Two Cities
Access the 2020 newsletter archive for the Book of the Year: David Copperfield
Access the 2019 newsletter archive for the Book of the year: Hard Times

Search the newsletter archive from 2019

Search Feb-Dec issues by using the Control or Command F function; type word/s in the search box then scroll up or down to locate the text.

 

Submissions

Submissions are encouraged and due by:

•  the third Wednesday of January (for the February issue)
•  the first Wednesdays of March to December (for the March to December issues)

 

Submission Guidelines

People are encouraged to submit material for our newsletter with the following in mind:

• Articles should be less than 3000 words, exclusive of notes.This is negotiable, dependent upon space. Do not format the text, your words are all we need.
• Illustrations are welcome for articles and other fellowship matters.
• If illustrations are to be included they should be sent as separate files and the author should indicate where they would like them to be placed.
• Please give them full captions indicating the artist especially.
• Photos or scanned pictures should be supplied at a minimum 300 dpi resolution.
• Contributors should ensure they have permission to reproduce any such illustrations for publication.
• We use Pages on a Mac to produce the newsletter.
• Our chosen font is Georgia but you may submit anything comprehensible by Microsoft Word or Apple and we will convert it to Georgia.
• Paragraphs should be separated by a line space, do not indent them.
• Single quotation marks should be used, with double for quotations within quotations.
• If you include quotations longer than three lines they should be blocked and indented in the same font and size as the rest of your piece.
• At the end of a sentence the full stop should be followed by a single space.
• No full stop should follow abbreviations such as ‘Mr’ or ‘Dr’.
• With rare exceptions, we only italicise foreign words and titles of books or other larger works of art. We do not use italics for emphasis.
• When proper names end with an ‘s’ such as Dickens and are used as possessives, we will display them like this: Dickens’s.
• Dates should give month and day followed by year (e.g. February 7 1812).
• We produce a printed version of the newsletter for distribution at our meeting on the third Wednesday of each month, but most of our readers now receive it earlier, online. If you would like something published, please send it by the first Wednesday of the month. Of course, we will hold your piece over until the next month, if that is warranted.

 

For all enquiries contact the Newsletter Editor