All events are free unless otherwise stated
Women’s Lives in the World of Charles Dickens
Friday 9 March
10 am - 4pm
Conference
London Metropolitan Archives
A day of talks and presentations which explores the lives of
women as reflected in historical records and literature. This event
marks International Women’s Day and the 200th anniversary of
Dickens.
£15 / £10 concessions (bring lunch) —but you must book in
advance
Oliver Twist’s London
Wednesday 14 March
12.30 - 1.30pm
Talk
Shoe Lane Library
London fascinated and terrified Dickens. It emerges powerfully
in Dickens’s Oliver Twist as a place of striking contrasts and a
character in its own right and will be explored in this talk by Dr
Tony Williams, former Joint Secretary of the International Dickens
Fellowship (1999 - 2006).
The following three talks will be given by Professor Robert L.
Patten of Rice University Texas and Scholar in Residence, Charles
Dickens Museum:
London’s Characters: Charles Dickens and George Cruikshank
Wednesday 11 April
2 - 3pm
Guildhall Library
Cruikshank, born in 1792, was two decades Dickens’s senior, and had
been drawing London residents for more than twenty years before he
paired with Dickens on illustrations to Sketches by Boz and Oliver
Twist. At many points both artist and author agreed about the
subjects and wonders of the city; but sometimes illustration and
text are rather at odds about representing that world.
Free—but you must book in advance
Phiz, Dickens and Memory in David Copperfield
Wednesday 18 April
2 - 3pm
Guildhall Library
David Copperfield is a successful London author when he writes his
memoir. His recollections, however, are partial, and Browne’s
illustrations sometimes fill in gaps that David’s narrative later,
or never, does. How can pictures depict the mind’s imaginings and
also correct them in light of subsequent disclosures? How does an
artist draw memories?
Free—but you must book in advance
Theatrical Characters: Martin Chuzzlewit and Orley Farm;
Dickens and Anthony Trollope; Browne and John Everett Millais
Wednesday, 25 April
2 - 3pm
Guildhall Library
Between 1840 and 1860 the way characters got represented on page
and stage changed dramatically. Comparing Browne’s portrait of the
provincial Pecksniff family to Millais’s image of the London lawyer
Mr. Furnival and his wife illustrates alterations in the verbal,
visual, and theatrical vocabularies of personality. These pictures,
like the texts they illustrate, speak in different ways to
audiences who assess character according to quite different
signs.
Free—but you must book in advance
Charles Dickens’s Clerkenwell
Monday 16 April
11am
Guided walk
London Metropolitan Archives
Visit places of interest in and around Clerkenwell which feature
in the works of Charles Dickens, from Oliver Twist to Barnaby
Rudge.
£7.50—but you must book in advance
Victorian Toys and Crafts
Wednesday 18 April
4.30 - 5.30pm
Children's event
Shoe Lane Library
A craft activity session to celebrate the birth of Charles
Dickens.
Children will be able to make Victorian toys.
Free—but you must book in advance