Exhibition plan

Dickenss Legacy
Today, 200 years after his birth, Charles Dickens is acknowledged as the first, and arguably greatest, modern urban novelist. His writings form a giant atlas of the life of the metropolis. Dickens and London are indelibly bound together. Dickens tracks a changing society in an industrial age. Many aspects of his work are profoundly unsettling, especially his insistent descriptions of the terrible living conditions of the poor, whose sufferings were largely ignored. Dickenss ultimate aim was to reform and improve society. He attacked financial fraud, Government incompetence, red tape (a term that he invented) and inadequate education. Sadly, inequalities and poverty still exist in London, still blighting lives. Dickenss words still challenge us today:
I saw that not one miserable wretch breathed out his poisoned life in the deepest cellar of the most neglected town, but, from the surrounding atmosphere, some particles of his infection were borne away, charged with heavy retribution on the general guilt.
From A December Vision, Household Words, 1850

The Houseless Shadow a film by William Raban

Inspired by one of Dickenss finest essays, Night Walks, first published in 1860, this film portrays London at night and explores the rhythms, sounds and shadows of todays city. Not being a creature of the night myself, I was challenged by the task of retracing the great mans footsteps, setting off after midnight and returning in the small hours to observe and capture London districts and their insomniac communities. The first task was to become invisible so that I could film without people becoming affronted by the camera. I carried the equipment in a large supermarket bag, pulling the tripod behind me strapped to a luggage trolley. I blended with the other houseless people of the night and soon they became my friends. Filmed over five months, when luck was on my side, I returned with good shots; at other times, I came back with nothing such are the fortunes of street cinematography.
William Raban, October 2011

FIRE EXIT FILM

In Life and Death

David Copperfield manuscript

EXIT INTRO

The Mystery of Edwin Drood manuscript

Dickens and the Modern Age

ENTRANCE

A City of Imagination

Dickenss Victorian London book Over 200 archive photographs most of which have never been published before illustrate this mesmerising guide to Victorian London as seen through the eyes of Charles Dickens.
The book is available from the Museum shop or at www.museumoflondonshop.co.uk 25 RRP, available for the special price of 20 during the exhibition run. Dickens: Dark London app The Museum of London has launched a new iPhone and iPad app which takes users on a journey through the darker side of Dickenss London. Beautifully imagined by illustrator David Foldvari, this graphic novel follows Dickens on his night walks of London. Actor Mark Strong gives voice to Dickens as passages from his works provide vivid descriptions of the Victorian capital. Bonus material featuring illustrated excerpts of some of Dickenss most famous novels also bring the 19th century city to life. Drawn from a selection of his short stories, Dickens: Dark London will be published monthly throughout the exhibition. The first edition is available now free of charge from iTunes. Each subsequent edition will be available to download for 1.49.

Dombey and Son manuscript

Amusements of the People

Day after day, such travellers crept past, but always, as she thought, in one directionalways towards the town. Swallowed up in one phase or other of its immensity, towards which they seemed impelled by a desperate fascination, they never returned. Food for the hospitals, the churchyards, the prisons, the river, fever, madness, vice, and death,they passed on to the monster, roaring in the distance, and were lost.
Dombey and Son, Chapter 33

Dickens and London exhibition guide

Great Expectations manuscript

Bleak House manuscript

www.museumoflondon.org.uk 020 7001 9844

Home and Hearth

Dickens and London prints Prints of a selection of photographs, featured in the exhibition and the accompanying publication Dickenss Victorian London, can be purchased from our print-on-demand touch screen in the shop foyer and from www.museumoflondonprints.com
Date Scale Project No Issue Design Firm

Dombey and Son manuscript

FIRE EXIT

No

1. This drawing is not to be used for construction 2. Drawings not to be scaled 3. All dimensions to be checked on site 4. All construction and shop drawings must be submitted for comment/approval prior to commencement of any work. 5. This drawing is subject to copyright

B 29/7/11 For Tender

06.07.2011 1.100 @ A3

PB 1011037 Dickens

For Tender

Museum of London Design 150 London Wall London EC2Y 5HN

Date Revision

Project Title

Dickens and London

Charles Dickens takes us right into the beating heart of the metropolis. London was the worlds first modern city. He reveals it in all its complexity, movement and energy. We hear its hum and lively chatter. We are shown its squalor and drabness, its extremes of wealth and poverty. Dickens burst onto the literary scene in the mid 1830s. His work stood out from the rest. It seemed to capture the mood of the period. His writings had a distinctive feel and pace with a lively use of language and vivid characterisation. Within a few years, Dickens was a celebrity and the latest instalments of his novels were eagerly awaited at home and abroad. What drove Dickenss imagination and creativity? This exhibition celebrates London as his muse. He called the city his magic lantern. He described the new urban consciousness and the experiences of ordinary people. Walter Bagehot described Charles Dickens as Londons special correspondent for posterity.
the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together, are gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering house-tops, and you shall have within its space, everything with its opposite extreme and contradiction, close beside.
Master Humphreys Clock, 1841

A City of Imagination
Dickens was an insomniac and needed little sleep. He thought nothing of walking the streets of London all night long. Through such regular excursions, he developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of Londons geography. Dickens had an extraordinary visual memory. He described his mind as a sort of capitally prepared and highly sensitive [photographic] plate. The variety and complexity of the city fed his creativity. As he walked, he mapped out the intricate storylines of his novels. Just as his fictional characters made their way from one place to another, so he followed in their footsteps across the real city. Dickens also listened closely to sounds, especially overheard conversations. He was a master at distinguishing dialect, intonation and word pattern, a skill that made the voices of his characters ring true.
Highlights: Furnivals Inn watchmans box, Newgate prison door, Bleak House manuscript, accents and dialects audio interactive, stereoscopic viewers.

Home and Hearth

For Victorians, the home was a sacred place, promising domestic bliss, harmony and security. Dickens himself aspired to this ideal when, as a young man, he set up his own home in London. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens presents the Cratchit family contentedly settled round the fire after dining on turkey and plum pudding. However, his stories can show the harsh side of domestic life. Many of his families have a general air of unhappiness. Some of the strongest family relationships that Dickens describes do not involve parents: Joe Gargery and Pip in Great Expectations are uncle and nephew; Captain Cuttle and Florence Dombey in Dombey and Son are not related at all. In 1850 Dickens launched a new weekly magazine called Household Words. He wanted to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among the Household thoughts of his readers. His mission was to Highlights: Dickenss Dream painting instil a sense of Christian charity and by Robert William Buss, Dickenss compassion for the poor. His own writing desk and chair, Dombey and Son charitable works included Urania manuscript, first edition of A Christmas Cottage in West London, a home for Carol, replica partwork of Nicholas destitute young women. Nickleby for handling. round Britain by stage coach. Later in life, as a celebrity author, he sped from place to place by train. He travelled so frequently that the jarring and shaking of the carriages made him ill. He was the first author to describe the railways impact on society, the city and the countryside. As a prolific letter-writer, Dickens made full use of the Penny Post, which was introduced in 1840. He kept in touch with friends and family by letter and responded to fans or people asking for money.
Highlights: Great Expectations manuscript, The Mystery of Edwin Drood manuscript, Dombey and Son manuscript, stagecoach model, Stanfords map of London 1862.

In Life and Death

It was only after Dickenss death that the traumatic events of his childhood became known to the world. His friend and biographer John Forster revealed how in 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work in a blacking (boot polish) factory. He experienced such profound grief and humiliation that he was scarred for the rest of his life. It was only after his fathers release from the Marshalsea debtors prison that the ordeal ended. Dickenss work is charged with death and tragedy, often involving children. The death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop sent the nation into mourning. Such episodes linked back to Dickenss own lost childhood, as well as the death of his much-loved sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth. In his final years, Dickens embarked on a series of well-paid reading tours. He loved performing in front of his public. But the readings took a terrible toll on his health. Nightly, he re-enacted the scene from Oliver Twist where Bill Sikes murders Nancy. The intensity left him physically drained and probably contributed to his early death at the age of 58.
Highlights: David Copperfield manuscript, touch objects, replica partwork of David Copperfield for handling, Dickenss reading desk.

Amusements of the People

Above all, Dickens set out to amuse his readers. This he certainly did: his dynamic and exuberant way with words made him the most popular writer since Shakespeare. Dickens saw the London theatre as an escape from the toil and drabness of everyday urban life. It was a fairy land, a place full of enchantment, excitement and colour. As a boy, his imagination had been fired up by a visit to a Christmas pantomime at Sadlers Wells. And as a young man he nearly became an actor, but was laid up in bed with a bad cold on the day of his audition. All his life he remained an actor at heart. Dickens was also a skilled stage-manager, arranging private theatrical performances for friends, and even for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1857.
Highlights: Astleys amphitheatre panel, Grimaldi clown outfit, toy theatre model.

Dickens and the Modern Age

Dickens felt that he was living in a special age of progress and improvement. He called it this summer-dawn of time. He wanted his journalism to convey the social wonders of the age, both good and evil. His writings reflect the scale of global trade flowing through Victorian London and the impact of the British Empire on peoples lives. Indeed, his own sons emigrated to Canada, India and Australia. Dickens embraced new technology. For his first reading tour of the United States in 1842, he crossed the Atlantic on a steamship. As a young reporter he travelled