Charles Dickens has returned to Portsmouth, the city of his birth. An appropriately larger than life statue of one of the most famous and well-read authors in the world was installed overnight in Guildhall Square, and will be unveiled on Friday at a celebration attended by scores of his descendants.
The statue, showing the author seated with a book in hand and another stack of books by his side, was put into place by crane two years late for the worldwide celebrations in 2012 for the bicentenary of Dickens' birth, and 110 years after a statue of him for Portsmouth was first proposed.
The sculptor, Martin Jennings, said of the statue's pose: "I wanted to suggest he is about to jump to his feet and begin one of the readings of Oliver Twist that had people weeping and fainting in the aisles."
Although there are Dickens statues overseas, including in Philadelphia and Sydney, this will be the first full-sized statue of the writer in Britain.
The startling delay was partly because after Dickens' death, in 1870 at the age of 58 – exhaustion a factor, from his relentless work rate – his will was found to state that he wanted "no monument, memorial or testimonial".
"That was just him talking about funeral arrangements," said Tony Pointon, a professor and chair of the Charles Dickens statue committee. "It's ridiculous to suggest that just because he wanted a quiet funeral he never wanted a statue made. He sat for several sculptors in his lifetime and there are millions of copies of busts of Dickens around. I wasn't sure we'd ever get him right – but I've seen the statue and I can tell you that's it, we've got him, it's awesome."
The Guildhall Square, Pointon pointed out, is part of London Road where Dickens was born, in February 1812, in a pretty but modest terraced house – now a museum – while his father, John, was working at the navy pay office in the dockyard.
"If you follow the road on and on it will take you eventually to the site of the Marshalsea [jail] in London, where his father was imprisoned for debt. So it was a very significant road in Dickens' life."
The author returned to Portsmouth several times. He brought one of his sons to the naval training school, and for one of his famous readings. By coincidence both his first love, Maria Beadnell (he met her again years later and was appalled to find her "grown dull and fat"), and his last mistress, Ellen Ternan, are buried in the city.
The London Road is also the route followed by Nicholas Nickleby and Smike, when they run away to Portsmouth with the idea of becoming sailors – a fate from which they are saved by becoming the improbable stars of the ramshackle Crummles touring theatre company.
As part of the fund-raising campaign for the new statue Ian and Gerald Dickens, great, great, grandsons of the author, walked the route over five days in the bicentennial summer.
They will be joined on Friday by a horde of their cousins, up to 40 Dickens descendants, including Oliver Dickens, nine, a great-great-great grandson, who will help with the unveiling. Dickens fans are coming from the US and other countries, and members of the Pickwick Cycle Club are expected to pitch up on penny-farthing bicycles.
Jennings, who also created the statue of John Betjeman, placed at St Pancras station, London, and who is working on a memorial to the pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe, in East Grinstead, said he did not want to turn Dickens into a dull stately bronze.
"I wanted to capture the energy everyone remarked on, the theatricality. As for the fact that he said he wanted no monument, I'm not sure I'd want to make a statue of anyone who said they did want one."