Dan Calinescu
My name is Dan Calinescu and I was born in Sibiu, Romania on December 24, 1937. In 1944, I emigrated first to Germany and I also spent part of the next few years, in Austria. I became involved in the performing arts on stage as well as in motion pictures. In 1955, I immigrated to Canada, where I continued performing, both on the stage and in Television. In 1961, I entered the University of Toronto, from which I graduated in 1964 with a degree in German and English Literature.
I began to teach for the North York Board of Education in September 1964 and retired from the classroom, with the same board, after thirty-six years of service in June 2000. In 1967, I became the first teacher in Ontario to teach Drama as a separate subject at the Junior and Senior High School levels. For about two years, I was also involved in teaching teachers how to teach the new Creative Drama course. I also directed many school productions of musicals and plays, often with casts and crews of over 100 young people. I continued personal appearances in various plays on Toronto stages for some years during my early teaching career.
In the summer of 1984, it was while I was on vacation in London, that I saw a copy of a first edition of my favourite Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, in a bookshop window in an arcade just off Piccadilly. I was almost instantly infected with Biliomania, the ‘Gentle Madness’ named so by writer Nicholas Bas-banes. I purchased my first ‘rare’ book in Dublin a few days later. It was also a copy of Oliver Twist, printed in 1867, and I paid the enormous sum of one Irish Pound – equal to about one Canadian dollar.
I then bought that first edition of Oliver Twist, which I had seen in London, shortly after returning home. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. My collection now encompasses over 5000 individual items of Dickens and related ‘Dickensiana’ items. It is now considered to be the largest collection of Dickens material in Canada and it includes first editions, autograph letters and manuscript materials. The collection was featured in episode IX of the BBC production of Dickens in America, starring BAFTA winner Dame Miriam Margolies. That series was shown repeatedly on BBC British Television and over PBS over the past few years and has been issued on DVD.
The Toronto Star published an article about my collection in January of 2012. Both the Robarts Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto and the Toronto Public Library, Yonge Street Main Branch, held major exhibitions based on my collection during 1992. These exhibits were held to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ only visit to Toronto from May 14th – 16th in 1842. Both exhibits were well received and the University of Toronto published a major exhibition catalogue of the exhibition called Please Sir – I Want Some More.
In March of 2010, the Antiquarian Bookseller Firm of Sumner and Stillman, located in Yarmouth, Maine issued a sales catalogue, which is called First American Editions of Charles Dickens – The Calinescu Collection – Part 1.
This catalogue of 113 items for sale consists of my collection of American imprints of Charles Dickens published between 1834 and 1848. Catalogue Part II, containing 150 items published between 1849 and 1870, the year of Dickens’ death, was issued in October 2012. Both catalogues are still available from the bookseller.
In 1985, I joined the Toronto Branch of the International Dickens Fellowship. I became its president in 1997, a post I held until 2003. I am presently Vice-President of the Toronto Branch. I have attend-ed a number of International Conferences of the Dickens Fellowship as a representative of the Toronto branch. My last one was the 2012 Bi-Centenary Conference in Portsmouth, Charles Dickens’ birthplace.
I have given a number of talks on Charles Dickens to schools, libraries, Dickens ‘enthusiast’ groups and other interested parties. Most recently, I gave a series of eight-two hour seminars to about fifty participants in nearby Durham for Durham Living Learning. I have also given presentations at the Public Libraries in Naples, Florida. In addition, I have been the keynote speaker, discussing details about my collection, at the Dickens Fellowship, Toronto Branch ‘Birthday Luncheon’ a number of times. I have also mounted small exhibitions from my collection at a number of our Luncheons.
Because I always enjoy talking about Dickens to anyone who is prepared to listen, I have been told that these talks have been well received and have created a good deal of listener interest.
On June 8th of 2013, a Blue Plaque was unveiled by Lucinda Dickens, the great great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens at 22 Cleveland Street in London’s West End.
This house was the first London residence of Charles Dickens, who lived there between the ages of three and five years and again between the ages of seventeen and nineteen years. Co-incidentally, this address is located only ten doors removed from the former Cleveland Street Workhouse!
I am the sponsor for the plaque. It is my ‘thank you’ to the memory of the Inimitable Charles Dickens for the immense pleasure and knowledge I have derived from being a ‘Dickens Enthusiast’.
At last year’s FanExpo, I presented Sir Patrick Stewart with a copy of American First Editions of The Christmas Books. I thanked him and told him that his portrayal of Scrooge in his film version of A Christmas Carol had become my favourite – after Alastair Sim, of course !
I also met Gillian Anderson and presented her with an 1864 copy of Bleak House – in appreciation of her great performances as Lady Dedlock in the UK TV version of the novel and as Miss Havisham in the BBC’s Great Expectations.
First published in the December 2014 edition of the Mudfog News, available from the Dickens Fellowship Toronto Branch.