Dickens and the Workhouse: Oliver Twist and the London Poor

by Ruth Richardson

Overview

The recent discovery that as a young man Charles Dickens lived only a few doors from a major London workhouse made headlines worldwide, and the campaign to save the workhouse from demolition caught the public imagination. Internationally, the media immediately grasped the idea that Oliver Twist's workhouse had been found, and made public the news that both the workhouse and Dickens's old home were still standing, near London's Telecom Tower. This book, by the historian who did the sleuthing behind these exciting new findings, presents the story for the first time, and shows that the two periods Dickens lived in that part of London - before and after his father's imprisonment in a debtors' prison - were profoundly important to his subsequent writing career.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191624131
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	02/02/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Ruth Richardson is a historian and the author of a number of books. The Wall Street Journal described her last book, The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy (Oxford University Press) as 'one of those rarities, history that reads like a novel'. That book won the 2009 Medical Journalists' Open Book Award.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Oliver Twist and the Workhouse1. Discovery: Threat, Puzzle, Silences2. Vicinity: Environs of Gentility, Environs of Poverty3. Institutions: Hospital and Workhouse4. Home: House, Landlord, Shop, Inside, Upstairs, Downstairs5. Street: Looking Down and Around6. Calamity: Sheerness, Chatham, Camden Town, Marshalsea, Somers Town7. Young Dickens: Return to Norfolk Street, Young Professional, First Essays8. Workhouse: St Paul's Parish, Farming the Infant Poor, Paul Pry, Parliament9. Works: iContemporaries/i, Sketches, iSpectres/i, Oliver Twist, iNames/i, iEchoes/i10. The Most Famous Workhouse in the World: Truth and FictionAppendixNotesIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Offers a detailed study of the Dickenses' family home and its surrounding neighborhood, as well as an evocative and damning portrait of Britain's de-facto 'prison system to punish poverty.'" —New Yorker

"Gives an intimately evoked view of Dickens's childhood and the New Poor Law of 1834 by which workhouses became 'a sort of prison system to punish (the poor).'" —Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books

"By sprinkling a fairy dust of creativity and imagination over mundane primary sources like maps, rate books, directories and newspapers, [Richardson] has breathed new life into Dickens's early years...This is a delight of a book, fresh and stimulating." —Dickens Quarterly

"Ruth Richardson's fascinating new book takes Oliver Twist as its subject and tells the story of her recent discovery that Dickens grew up only a few doors from the major London workhouse that inspired both the novel and, likely, the novelist's passion for social justice. Showing a deep understanding of the history of cities, the history of city planning, architecture, sociology and even sight-lines, this book is a detailed account of the boy Dickens's neighborhood and its possible influences upon him." —America Magazine

From the Publisher

Medical historian Richardson (The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy) joined the cause to preserve a London building that had once been the Strand Union Workhouse in (as the British say) Cleveland Street. She made what she calls "the remarkable finding" that Dickens lived only a few doors away as a toddler and again in his late teens. Never mind that Dickens's London addresses have long been known and that he placed the Oliver Twist workhouse 75 miles north of London (an area he visited where there was a workhouse)—Richardson wants to make the case for this workhouse as the basis for the famous workhouse scenes in Oliver Twist. The possible connection has in fact saved the building from demolition. VERDICT It may not matter which real workhouse(s) inspired Dickens, but Richardson reveals Dickens's passionate relationship with London, its urban poor, 19th-century parliamentary reforms, and the task of social crusading. For all readers interested in Dickens's formative years and how he transformed experience into both narrative and action. They should also seek out Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Becoming Dickens.

Library Journal