This walk revisits the highways and byways of early Victorian London encountering the traumatic twists in Dicken’s early years as he took his first tentative steps into this new city of opportunity starting with the debtors prison of Marshalsea and in the places Dickens frequented: the quiet graveyard of St George the Martyr, the bustling fruit and veg market, Old London Bridge.
These places were where his imagination grew, fed by the energy and incident of this rapidly growing city. We become aware of his acquaintance with Victorian ‘low life’, and with the twists in life, the unexpected hardships. These grand themes and encounters that he later transforms into some of the most vivid characters and plots in London’s celebrated literature: Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist, Nancy, Bill Sykes. By exploring these concealed aspects of Victorian London we come face to face with the inspirational back stories that gave birth to Dickens’ extraordinary fiction.
This free guided walks reveals something of his restless spirit, manifest in his compulsive night-walking and his feelings of ‘houselessness’.
Meet: Borough Tube (finish near London Bridge station)
Walk: Free
Date: Saturday 13 February
Time: 11am –1pm
Part of Southwark Hidden Stories Walks with CoolWalks.
