Dickens Day 2024: ‘Dickens and the Gothic’

Dickens Day 2024

‘Dickens and the Gothic’

 Saturday 12th October 2024, Senate House London

"Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me."

 (Great Expectations, Ch.8. p.67)  

We are pleased to announce this year’s Dickens Day conference on the topic of ‘Dickens and the Gothic’. Dickens’s works frequently embraced and interrogated the Gothic mode. Within his works we find classic Gothic tropes such as the supernatural, family secrets, grotesque characters, hidden threats, generational mysteries, haunted landscapes and crises of identity. While his shorter fiction frequently encompassed the fantastic within their narrative, his novels also integrated Gothic elements into urban environments. We look forward to exploring Dickens’s use of the Gothic to consider how he was inspired by Gothic works before him, and how he went on to inspire Gothic works after him.

The latest programme is available here.  

Ticket rates:

Standard in-person ticket: £30

Concession in-person ticket (students or unwaged): £20