Editing Charles Dickens (section)

===Death===
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| caption1 = [[Luke Fildes|Samuel Luke Fildes]] ''– The Empty Chair''. Fildes was illustrating ''Edwin Drood'' at the time of Dickens's death. The engraving shows Dickens's empty chair in his study at [[Gads Hill Place]]. It appeared in the Christmas 1870 edition of ''[[The Graphic]]'' and thousands of prints of it were sold.<ref>{{cite web |title=Luke Fildes |url=http://www.thefamousartists.com/luke-fildes |publisher=TheFamousArtists.com |access-date=9 March 2012 |archive-date=14 March 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120314174753/http://www.thefamousartists.com/luke-fildes |url-status=live}}</ref>
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| caption2 = Dickens's grave in [[Westminster Abbey]]
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| caption3 = A 1905 transcribed copy of the death certificate of Charles Dickens
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On 8 June 1870, Dickens had another stroke at his home after a full day's work on ''Edwin Drood''. He never regained consciousness. The next day, he died at Gads Hill Place. Biographer Claire Tomalin has suggested Dickens was actually in Peckham when he had had the stroke and his mistress Ellen Ternan and her maids had him taken back to Gads Hill so that the public would not know the truth about their relationship.<ref name=Tomalin2011p395>{{harvnb|Tomalin|2011|pp=395–396, 484}}</ref> Contrary to his wish to be buried at [[Rochester Cathedral]] "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner",<ref>{{harvnb|Forster|2006|p=628}}.</ref> he was laid to rest in the [[Poets' Corner]] of [[Westminster Abbey]]. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads:

{{blockquote|To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9&nbsp;June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world.<ref>{{harvnb|Hughes|1891|p=226}}.</ref>}}

A letter from Dickens to the Clerk of the [[Privy Council]] in March indicates he had been offered and accepted a [[baronetcy]], which was not gazetted before his death.<ref>Charles Dickens Was Offered A Baronetcy, ''The Sphere'', 2 July 1938, p34.</ref> His last words were "On the ground" in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=1077–1078}}.</ref>{{refn|A contemporary obituary in ''[[The Times]]'', alleged that Dickens's last words were: "Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of Art." Reprinted from ''The Times'', London, August 1870 in {{harvnb|Bidwell|1870|p=223}}.|group="nb"}} On Sunday, 19 June 1870, five days after Dickens was buried in the Abbey, Dean [[Arthur Penrhyn Stanley]] delivered a memorial elegy, lauding "the genial and loving humorist whom we now mourn", for showing by his own example "that even in dealing with the darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius could still be clean, and mirth could be innocent". Pointing to the fresh flowers that adorned the novelist's grave, Stanley assured those present that "the spot would thenceforth be a sacred one with both the New World and the Old, as that of the representative of literature, not of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue."<ref>{{harvnb|Stanley|1870|pp=144–147:146}}.</ref>

In his will, drafted more than a year before his death, Dickens left the care of his £80,000 estate (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|80000|1870|r=-6}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}){{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} to his long-time colleague John Forster and his "best and truest friend" Georgina Hogarth who, along with Dickens's two sons, also received a tax-free sum of £8,000 (equivalent to £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|8000|1870|r=-5}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}).{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} He confirmed his wife Catherine's annual allowance 
of £600 (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|600|1870|r=-4}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}).{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} He bequeathed £19 19s (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|19.95|1870|r=-3}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}){{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}} to each servant in his employment at the time of his death.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka//CD-Forster-13.html |title=John Forster, "The Life of Charles Dickens" (13) |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131225202712/http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka//CD-Forster-13.html |archive-date=25 December 2013}}</ref>