As the wife of such a star, Catherine began to be overlooked. Meanwhile, while she was as happy as her husband at first, her multiple pregnancies – from which she barely got the chance to recover before getting pregnant again – began to take their toll on her health, energy and their marriage.

Now, for more than a century, Catherine has been marginalised and misremembered as a dull, frumpy wife. Even the sole Dickens biopic ever to have been made by the film industry focused not on Catherine, but on Ellen Ternan, Dickens’s mistress (a relationship that was ultimately the reason he separated from Catherine).

But the real story of Catherine is that of a fun-loving young woman who, as the wife of an international celebrity, travelled widely and had the opportunity to see and experience things that most women of her era and social status did not. She and Charles were very keen amateur actors, for example. Catherine not only performed in shows at home, but on stage in both the United States and Canada.