Rochester - loved by Dickens

In 1998 Rochester in Kent lost its city status owing to the outgoing council neglecting to appoint ceremonial "Charter Trustees" to continue to represent the historic Rochester area, an error not even noticed by the council for four years until 2002. Rochester stands at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles (48km) from London.

Rochester was a city loved by Charles Dickens. Anyone who's ever thumbed through the likes of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or The Pickwick Papers will know that the landscape and people of 19th Century Kent provided rich pickings for Dickens.

The town is home to a number of important historic buildings, the most prominent of which are the Guildhall, the Corn Exchange, Restoration House, Eastgate House, Rochester Castle and Rochester Cathedral. Many of the buildings in the town centre date from the 18th century or as early as the 14th century. The chapel of St. Batholomew's Hospital dates from the hospital's founding in 1078. 

With my interest in the county of my birth I have started to collect books about "The Garden of England" and have found www.abebooks.co.uk  to be an excellent source. I purchased "Rochester: A sketch in pen and verse" by MALCOLM JOHN here, published in 1977 by John Hallewell Publications.

It includes a selection of verse by the author accompanied by prints based upon sketches drawn by Katherine Kimball in 1912. Katharine Kimball was born in New Hampshire. After studying at the National Academy of Design she went abroad to continue her studies, not in Paris, whose academies were still largely closed to women, but in London at the Royal College of Art. She pursued her career in England, exhibiting between 1906 and 1940 at the Royal Academy and the R. E. (the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers), of which she was elected an Associate. Her art was influenced by her admiration for the work of James McBey. As with many talented women artists of her pioneering generation, information about Katharine Kimball is hard to come by, although her work is in the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bibliothèque d'Art et d'Archéologie in Paris. Many of her etchings show scenes in France.

I have also tracked down a book entitled "Dickens' Rochester" by John Oliver at Abe Books. I shall look forward to reading it.