Star Hotel, Great Yarmouth his tenure he made several improvements to the tavern, adding a billiard room and dining room to replace the stable block. In 1848 Charles Dickens visited and stayed in Great Yarmouth while gathering material for his book "David Copperfield" and many of the town's buildings have their place in the book including the "Star", which becomes the Inn where David and Steerforth stayed. In 1819, the "Star Tavern" was the Yarmouth terminus for the royal mail coach, which left for London every day at 2:00 pm. By 1845, the tavern was also the terminus for mail for Birmingham, and a
Joseph Clayton Clarke a freelance artist until 1900. Clarke's illustrations from Dickens first appeared in 1887 in "Fleet Street Magazine", with two published collections appearing shortly after as "The Characters of Charles Dickens" (1889) and "Some Well Known Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens" (1892). Early in the twentieth century five sets of postcards based on his Dickens drawings were published, as well as seven sets of non-Dickensian comic cards. From 1927 Clarke earned his living from watercolor sketches, mainly of Dickens' characters, which he sold to and through the London book trade. Frederic G. Kitton referred to Clarke in his book