Dickens' London

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The Old Curiosity Shop in Holborn, London, the model for the antique shop in The Old Curiosity Shop

There is a close relationship between the works of Charles Dickens and the City of London , which is the setting for many of his novels. London is not just the background of the works, the city itself is the subject and, so to speak, a fictional character.

For Dickens, London was a type of magic lantern , a popular form of entertainment in the Victorian era that involved projecting images. Of all his fictional characters, none is more important than the city of London itself; it stimulated his imagination and made him write., In a letter to his friend John Forster in 1846, Dickens wrote, 'a day in London sets me up and starts me' (a day in London upsets me and scares me), but out of town 'the toil and labor of writing, day after day, without that magic lantern is IMMENSE !!' (The toil and plagues of writing without this magic lantern are enormous, day after day.)

However, the scientist Clare Pettitt notes that although many of the places can be identified in today's cityscape, they no longer exist.

In addition to the later novels and short stories, there are Dickens' descriptions of London, which were originally published in various newspapers in the 1830s, in an anthology that appeared in 1836 under the title Sketches by Boz . Dickens' eldest son, also named Charles Dickens, authored a popular London city guide that appeared in 1879 under the title Dickens's Dictionary of London .

The locations

Pickwick Papers

Dickens' first novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also: The Pickwick Papers , published in German translation as Die Pickwickier ) follows the journeys of the club members across England, with the travelers stopping at hundreds of inns in between . A selection of them, those in and around London, including the George and Vulture on Lombard Street and the Golden Cross in Charing Cross, are shown in Bertram Waldrom Matz's 1921 book The inns & taverns of "Pickwick", with some observations on their other associations , they are still popular with pub crawl leaders today.

Oliver Twist

When Oliver joins the Artful Dodger Jack Dawkins to take him to Fagin's hiding place, they come down several streets until they reach the Saffron Hill area. The final chapter is set on Jacob's Island , where the murderer Bill Sikes dies while trying to escape the pursuers and save himself on the banks of the Neckinger , then known as Folly Ditch .

Little Dorrit

The father of Charles Dickens was for some time a prisoner in the debtors' prison Marshalsea in the district of Southwark , with his wife and their children with the exception of Dickens and his sister Fanny were housed there. The prison is the setting for much of the novel Little Dorrit .

Most of the guilty prison has been demolished. However, one wall still stands near the Southwark Local Studies Library on Borough High Street . It also borders the graveyard of St. George the Martyr Church , where Amy (the eponymous Little Dorrit ) of the novel is staying when she returns to Marshalsea late that evening. At the end of the novel, she married Arthur Clennam in the same church. Nearby is the George Inn , where Amy's brother Tip adds his wishes to a begging letter.


Mr. Plornish, another inmate of the Marshalsea, moves his family to the Bleeding Heart Yard neighborhood in Farringdon . He is visited by Arthur Clennam when he investigates the Dorrits.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Edgar Pemberton, Dickens's London; Or, London in the Works of Charles Dickens , 1876, p. 4, Google Books
  2. ^ Edwin Beresford Chancellor, The London of Charles Dickens: being an account of the haunts of his characters and the typographical setting of his novels , 1924, Google Books
  3. ↑ Jeremy Tambling, Going astray: Dickens and London , 2009, Google Books
  4. ^ Dickens' London: Perception, Sujectivity and Phenomenal Urban Multiplicity , Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2012, ISBN 978-0-7486-4040-9
  5. ^ A b Bryony Jones: A tale of one city: Dickensian London , CNN . February 13, 2012. Accessed August 21, 2014. 
  6. ^ Charles Dickens, The selected letters of Charles Dickens , Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford et al. 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-959141-1
  7. ^ Rebecca Dalzell: How Charles Dickens Saw London . In: Smithsonian , Smithsonian Institution, June 5, 2011. Retrieved August 21, 2014. 
  8. ^ Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz , 1836; at Wikisource in English: [1]
  9. ↑ cf. Lee Jackson, A dictionary of Victorian London: an AZ of the great metropolis , 2006, Google Books
  10. ↑ Carolyn Fleming and Jack Fleming, Thinking Places: Where Great Ideas Were Born , Trafford Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4251-2585-1 , page 111 [2]
  11. ↑ Matz: The inns and taverns of "Pickwick", with some observations on Their other associations . Charles Scribner, New York 1921 (Retrieved August 21, 2014).
  12. ^ Charles Dickens : Oliver Twist: or, The Parish Boy's Progress . Mathew Carey, New York 1838, ISBN 91-1-937201-9 , p.  43 ( Accessed December 28, 2009).
  13. ^ Digging Jacob's Island . In: Current Archeology . February 7, 2012. Accessed August 7, 2014.
  14. ↑ Herbert Flude, Citisights guide to London: ten walks through London's past , ISBN 978-0-595-18147-6
  15. ^ Francis Miltown, Dickens' London , 1903 Google Books
  16. ^ Frank Hopkinson: The Joy of Pubs: Everything You Wanted to Know About Britain's Favorite Drinking Establishment . Anova Books, November 7, 2013, ISBN 978-1-909396-58-6 , p. 102.

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