The Penny Readings is our incredibly popular annual event, holding true to a well-established Dickensian tradition. And all still for only a penny.

The Penny Readings hit London!

Sunday 22nd January 2012, 2pm-4:30pm at the British Library.

The Reader Organisation teamed up with Vintage Classics and the British Library to bring the famous Penny Readings to London for the first time. As we expand the reach of our Get Into Reading project across the city, bringing people together through shared reading, we thought it was about time that the event which has been unmissable in Liverpool for the last eight years should travel with us too.

From the 1840s, Charles Dickens toured Britain giving readings for only a penny, so we followed this tradition to celebrate the beginning of his bicentennial year.

The Penny Readings featured a fantastic ensemble of writers, musicians, magicians and readers, including authors AS Byatt and Louis de Bernières, and comedian Arthur Smith. The line-up also included Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, author, speaker and great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens; ‘music hall legend’ Ida Barr, Tweedy the clown, award winning magician Romany, and mezzo soprano Patricia Hammond, as well as The Reader Organisation’s own Angela Macmillan and Phil Davis.

Ticket holders also received a copy of a Dickens novel published by Vintage Classics, and all for a donation of just one penny.

Information about the 2012 Liverpool Penny Readings will be coming soon, so watch this space!