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
Charles Dickens Chesterton stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his "despotic" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this. The question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the sentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her recent "Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition", sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to