JOSEPH GRIMALDI (1778 - 1837), one of the greatest English clowns and pantomimes of all time, was born in London to an Italian ballet-master and a dancer in the theatre’s corps-de-ballet. The death of Grimaldi’s father when he was nine plunged the family into debt. He was introduced to the stage at the age of two and began performing at the Sadler’s Wells theatre at the age of three.
Grimaldi’s fame as a pantomime clown was unequalled and he is credited as an innovator. He introduced the tradition of audience participation, of poking fun at spectators, and presented to the world in his performance as Joey, the modern clown as a central character. He was the original 'Clown Joey', the term 'Joey' being used to describe clowns since his day. Of his own name he punned 'I am grim all day - but I make you laugh at night!' Yet he died a poor and physically crippled man.
A memorial service is held every year in Hackney on the first Sunday nded by hundreds of clowns from all over the world and followed by a show for children.
In 1837 Charles Dickens, then twenty-five years old, was asked to ‘tidy up’ Grimaldi’s autobiography. He ended up re-writing most of it and the result is a work comparable to Dickens’s famous early successes, Sketches of Boz and The Pickwick Papers, both of which had appeared the year before.

'The clown left the stage with Grimaldi, and though often heard of, has never since been seen'
Charles Dickens

CHARLES DICKENS (1812 - 1870) was born in Portsmouth, the second of eight children. He began working in a London boot-blacking factory at the age of twelve to help support his family after his father was imprisoned for debt. The family later recovered financial stability through inheritance but his experience in the factory at a tender age and the living conditions of working-class people became major themes of his works as he championed the causes of the poor and oppressed.
A worldwide literary phenomenon in his lifetime and renowned as much for his journalism and public speaking as for his novels, Charles Dickens now ranks as the most important Victorian writer and one of the most influential and popular authors in the English language. His memorable and vividly rendered characters and his combination of humour, trenchant satire and compassion have left an indelible mark on our collective imagination.

'Grimaldi is dead and hath left no peer. We fear with him the spirit disappeared'
London Illustrated News

'There is no writer, in my opinion, who is so much a painter and a black-and-white artist as Dickens. His figures are resurrections'
Vincent Van Gogh, letter to Anthon G. A. Ridder Van Rappard (March 1883)

There can be no question of the importance of Dickens as a human event in history; (...) a naked flame of mere natural genius (... ) revealing a light that never was on sea or land, if only in the long fantastic shadows that it threw from common things' G.K. Chesterton,
"Charles Dickens: His Life" (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1929)

'I think Dickens is one of the best friends mankind has ever had. He has held the mirror up to nature, (his character's) names should be in every child's mouth; they ought to be adopted members of every household' George Santayana, "Dickens" (1921)