London in the Time of Dickens

Travel back to Victorian London and explore the extreme contrasts of the city that inspired Charles Dickens’s most beloved works. Examine how Dickens uses melodrama to paint the portrait of a city divided starkly between the rich and poor and ponder what has changed over the course of 150 years and what has remained remarkably the same.

Novels like Oliver Twist show Dickens's empathy for the desperate and advocate for progressive reform, yet the novelist also had a strong authoritarian streak. As you will see in this lecture, this contradiction mirrors the debates over crime and policing that were unfolding in London at the time—and that we’re still wrangling with today.

The near-complete separation of public and private space was an idealized and deeply gendered division in Victorian culture. Consider the appeal of the feminized domestic space as opposed to the harsh public world, while also examining why the idyllic image of sheltered womanhood was simply not a reality for most wives and daughters in the London of Dickens's day.

Many of Dickens’s protagonists are children. See how centering his novels on such vulnerable young characters and describing the world of London through their eyes allows him to engage his readers, sway their emotions, and add force to his social critiques. Follow the adventures of young characters in such works as Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Our Mutual Friend.

Look back on ways the natural world was radically altered to suit human wishes and needs in 19th century London and consider what Dickens’s work says about the value of natural spaces in the urban sprawl. See where and how Dickens's characters find respite in nature and how it freed those living in the large and crowded city from some of its oppressive and unhealthy effects, at least for a time.

By the 1850s, Londoners used 13 million cubic feet of gas a day and 3 million tons of coal every year. The immense population also generated about 9.5 million cubic feet of refuse daily. Through Dickens’s rich descriptive language, you’ll walk the muck-laden streets and peer through the “pea soup” fogs that threatened the health and safety—both literal and spiritual—of London’s denizens.

Focusing on such projects as the construction of the railways and the embankment of the Thames, consider the many ways in which the Victorians sought to improve their capital city. As you’ll see, their engineering projects and their social measures radically altered London—for better and for worse.

History runs deep in London. Join Dickens as a time traveler in the city, exploring the many eras that London displays in its very stones and streets. Consider how Victorian “improvements” to the city endangered the material historical record of the city and see why history plays such a pivotal role in many of Dickens’s stories.

From the theaters of the West End to the gin palaces of Holborn, Victorian London offered a wide range of enjoyments and entertainment—but often at a high cost. Explore the many pleasures of the city and what Dickens represents as their dangers, as he voices the social concerns and imperial anxieties of his day.

Seen as the heart of the empire, London testified to Britain’s greatness. Yet it also revealed the empire’s vulnerability. Examine the growth of the British Empire and see how England’s global influence made itself known in Victorian London through goods, services, people, and even food. Then, examine the ways Dickens expressed the complex anxieties of imperial power in his novels.

Dickens centered several of his novels in “legal London”—the region of the city devoted to the legal profession and courts of law. Why did the law and its repercussions interest him so much? Examine how the law worked in Victorian London and consider how it impacted Dickens himself as the son of a debtor, a shorthand reporter, and an author seeking copyright protection.

Dickens’s story is one of steep upward mobility. From humble beginnings, Dickens rose to become a wealthy and renowned literary figure. Close the course with a look at the most personal element of Dickens’s London experience: his many homes over the course of his life in the city. His changing addresses speak to his childhood hardships, his ambition, and his remarkable success as a writer.