At our first TOCS reading group meeting today, we talked (among many other things) about the fact that Charles Dickens used his novels to address specific social problems - and that the awareness his novels created often led to the solution (at least partially) of these problems. In
Oliver Twist (1838 - full text and Kindle
here), one of Dickens's most famous works, he describes the ghastly living circumstances of workhouse labourers. As a boy, Dickens of course spent time in a workhouse himself, while his father was in the debtors' prison - a horrible experience which influenced this author's work greatly.
British historian Ruth Richardson has just published a new book called
Dickens & the Workhouse: Oliver Twist & the London Poor (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Photo:
Celebrating Dickens 2012
In this book she describes her discovery of the actual workhouse Dickens worked in as a child, and the building's astonishing proximity to a residential house Dickens lived in for years. See her enthuse about her discovery in this video clip:
(full version
here)
or read about her petition to save this historical workhouse from demolition
here. (It worked, by the way, and
the building was saved.)
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