A.N. Wilson

Dickens’s London is more elusive than the artful dodger himself

Admirers of the novels have always enjoyed identifying their settings where possible, but Dickens’s old haunts are now mainly glimpsed in street names or blue plaques

Field Lane, off Saffron Hill, Fagin’s lair in Oliver Twist. Illustration from Old and New London, with numerous engravings from the most authentic sources, by Walter Thornbury. [Alamy] 
issue 19 August 2023
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  • Dickensland: The Curious History of Dickens’s London

    Lee Jackson

    Yale University Press, pp. 272, £20

Is Dickens’s London a place, or a state of mind, or a bit of both? I used to ask myself the question all the time when I was literary editor of this periodical and our office in Doughty Street was a few doors down from the Dickens Museum, at no.

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