Academics and enthusiasts celebrate 25th annual Dickens Day at Birkbeck
Dickens enthusiasts and scholars will gather at Birkbeck to celebrate the 25th annual Dickens Day...
Academics and enthusiasts celebrate 25th annual Dickens Day at Birkbeck
On 15 October, Dickens enthusiasts and scholars will gather for a one-day conference at Birkbeck to celebrate the 25th annual Dickens Day.
Birkbeck organises Dickens Day every year, in partnership with the Dickens Fellowship and the University of Leicester. It is a unique event in the UK bringing together Dickens enthusiasts from a range of different backgrounds, from general readers to influential academics. Dickens Day was founded by Professor Michael Slater, an Honorary Fellow of Birkbeck and one of the world’s leading experts on Dickens’s life and works, who will be delivering the keynote address this year.
This year’s event will explore Dickens’s travels, and the theme of travel in Dickens’s works. From stagecoaches to railways, sailing ships to steam ships, travel changed forever over the nineteenth century, as new modes of transport enabled people to go faster and further than ever before. Dickens himself travelled to America, which he reached by paddle steamer, and to Italy, France and Switzerland; all are immortalised in his writing, as is Australia, which he only visited in his imagination. While keenly aware of the “railway mania” that was changing the face of the country, and of the opportunities created by the railways, nostalgic descriptions of stagecoach travel also run through much of Dickens’s fiction.
The day will end with a celebratory reception, complete with cake.
For further information, and to register, please contact John Millington at the Institute of English Studies: Tel: 020 7664 4859, Email: jon.millington@sas.ac.uk
Further information:
English Literature courses at Birkbeck