Centre for Studies in Literature (CSL)

The Other Dickens

As part of the  2012 Cultural Olympiad, members of the Centre Patricia Pulham, Elodie Rousselot, Christopher Pittard and Charlotte Boyce have been celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Dickens's birth in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, with an ongoing series of events including a successful major international conference  'The Other Dickens', which took place on 6-8 July 2012.

This event built on the fruitful interaction between Victorian and Contemporary scholars encouraged by emerging notions of Neo-Victorianism.  Participants were asked to consider the impact of Dickens's work on Victorian and neo-Victorian writing and to challenge conventional perceptions of Dickens. CSL members organised a series of non-academic events that included (in collaboration with Portsmouth Grammar School)  a performance of ‘Dickens’ Women’ by the renowned actress, Miriam Margolyes  and ‘Afterlives: Mrs Dickens in Fact and Fiction’, an ‘in-conversation’ event  featuring Prof. Lillian Nayder (Bates College, US), author of The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth, and Gaynor Arnold, author of Girl in a Blue Dress. [View video of event.] The final bicentenary event will be a screening of Scrooge (1951), introduced by Christopher Pittard.

To mark the bicentenary, Patricia Pulham, with Brad Beaven (CEISR), has co-written Dickens and the Victorian City. Also visit: www.dickens.port.ac.uk to learn more about Dickens and Portsmouth.

‘The Other Dickens’ research project is part of CSL’s commitment to Victorian Literary Heritage. For related projects please see: Tennyson's Celebrity Circle and Conan Doyle.

CSL is affiliated to the Dickens Project Santa Cruz.  We are keen to hear from interested researchers, MA and PhD students working on Dickens, Victorian, or Neo-Victorian topics. Please see our PhD pages for more information.