Exclusively for financial reasons, in the month of July, 2005, our entity emancipated itself from the Dickens Fellowship in London and adopted since then the name of THE BUENOS AIRES DICKENSIANS as a purely local group though with the same finality.

The former Buenos Aires Branch of the Dickens Fellowship was founded by the novelist and essayist Miguel Alfredo Olivera on June 9th, 1959 and was acknowledged by the London Headquarters in 1961. Two famous writers, Eduardo Mallea and Jorge Luis Borges, held the Presidency successively; it was later on passed to Olivera himself and was succeeded by Patrick Orpen Dudgeon. Currently and since the year 2000 writer María Isabel Clucellas is the Honorary President.

An outstanding event took place during the first years of our Institution. Indeed, The Argentine Writers Association of Buenos Aires was the right scene of a party at which many attended disguised in Victorian fashion such as: writers Alicia Jurado as Sarah Gamp and Miguel Alfredo Olivera as Charles Dickens, among others.

On a visit to The Dickens House at Doughty Street, London, the Secretary of the Dickens Fellowship welcomed our founder saying: “You are very much alike Charles Dickens”, at which Miguel Alfredo Olivera quickly replied: “And you, alike Samuel Pickwick”.