‘Dickensland’ with Lee Jackson

Late Victorians and Edwardians were obsessed with tracking down the locations—dubbed “Dickensland”—that famously featured in his novels. But his fans were faced with a city that was undergoing rapid redevelopment, where literary shrines were far from sacred. Over the following century, sites connected with Dickens were demolished, relocated, and reimagined.

Dr. Lee Jackson will guide us through the fascinating history of Dickensian tourism, exploring both real Victorian London and a fictional city shaped by fandom, tourism, and heritage entrepreneurs. Beginning with the late nineteenth century, Jackson will explain the key sites of literary pilgrimage and their relationship with Dickens and his work, revealing hidden, reinvented, and even faked locations. From vanishing coaching inns to submerged riverside stairs, hidden burial grounds to apocryphal shops, ‘Dickensland’ charts the curious history of an imaginary world.

Lee Jackson is a well-known expert on Victorian London. He is the author of ‘Dirty Old London,’ ‘Walking Dickens’ London,’ and ‘Palaces of Pleasure’. Lee has lectured on Victorian topics for libraries and museums throughout London and is an academic advisor to the Dickens Museum.

Copies of Lee’s book, ‘Dickensland: The Curious History of Dickens's London,’ will be on sale, so come prepared!