Betty Jackman says Dr Edward Caudle, an Englishman who migrated to central Victoria with his wife and teenage daughter in 1852, could have been a close acquaintance of the esteemed author.

“I have met with members of the family,” she said.

“They say Isabella (Dr Caudle’s daughter) would often talk of her youth in London attending parties and plays, and spoke fondly of time the family spent with Mr Dickens.”

Mrs Jackman said it was plausable that the story had some truth to it and believed a clue to their friendship was in a South London drinking hole.

“Dr Caudle was the surgeon medical officer of Southwark, London, during the 1849 cholera period,” she said.

“He lived and worked in this area.

“Charles Dickens had a long and deep association with Southwark, both personal and literary.

“The George Inn, which was frequented by Dickens, was only a stone’s throw from the surgery. Perhaps Dr Caudle met Dickens here – they were both in the exact vicinity of each other.”

Mrs Jackman said Dr Caudle’s wife Anne – namesake of Bendigo’s Anne Caudle Centre campus – would also take up writing upon their arrival in Australia and was a regular contributor to the columns of the Bendigo Advertiser.

“I have been interested in the life of Anne for over 10 years now,” she said.

“That was what sparked my interest in the Caudle family’s literary connection.”

Dramatised readings of Mr Dickens’s work were held at the Bendigo library last night to mark the bicentennial anniversary of his birth in 1812.

Strathdale resident Dr Jean Douglas, who visited the Charles Dickens at 200 exhibition in New York last year, said the author’s work remained as timely in 2012 as when first written.

“These books are still in print, sell well, read well and teach life lessons that have a timeless application,” she said.

“Dickens was able to include a social commentary of those times in a distinct way that enthralled his readers then as well as today.”