Dickens and Travel

From childhood, Charles Dickens was fascinated by tales from other countries and other cultures, and he longed to see the world. In Dickens and Travel, Lucinda Hawksley looks at the journeys made by the author – who is also her great great great grandfather.

Although Dickens is usually perceived as a London author, in the 1840s he whisked his family away to live in Italy for year, and spent several months in Switzerland. A few years later he fell in love with France and took up residence in Paris and Boulogne (where, towards the end of his life, he lived in secret with his lover). In addition to travelling widely in Europe, he also toured the USA twice, travelled around Canada, where he and his wife Catherine performed onstage and, before his untimely death, was planning a tour of Australia.

Dickens and Travel enters into the world of the Victorian traveller and looks at how Charles Dickens’s journeys influenced his writing and enriched his life.