EVENT: Dicken’s Day ‘Dickens and Art’

Dickens Day

Saturday 11th October 2025

Dickens and Art

We’re happy to announce that booking is now open for this year’s Dickens Day in Senate House, London. This year’s event will take place on Saturday 11th October and is on the theme of ‘Dickens and Art’. A full programme for the day can be found below. The day will also be followed by a book launch to celebrate the publication of the Second Edition of the Wiley Blackwell’s Companion to Charles Dickens, edited by David Paroissien and Leon Litvack. You can register for the day at the IES website here: https://sas.sym-online.com/registrationforms/iesbooking_123503025415556968/done/ 

For those who have not attended a Dickens Day before, we are proud to welcome academics and enthusiasts alike for a convivial celebration of the inimitable – do join us!

Programme

9.00am Registration

9.45am Opening remarks – Dickens Day Organisers 

10.00am:  PLENARY PANEL

– Chris Louttit, ‘“This masterly group of portraiture”: Fred Barnard’s Character Sketches from Dickens’ 

– Kamilla Elliott, ‘Charles Dickens and the Rise (?) of the Picture-ID’ 

–  Malcolm Andrews, ‘Dickens the Tenebrist’ 

Chair: Tbc 

11.15am READINGS 

11.30am Tea/Coffee

12.00pm PARALLEL PANELS 

A) Dickens and his Illustrators

– Dominic Janes, ‘Frames, borders and windows in Hablot Browne’s Illustrations of Dickens’ 

– Joanna Marshall-Collins, ‘Daniel Maclise, painter for Dickens: Public art, private resonance’ 

– Peter Bryden, ‘Dickens, Fildes, and Drood’

Chair: Tbc 

B) Dickens Artistic Techniques

– Jeremy Parrott, ‘The Greek artistic roots of David Copperfield’

– Nanako Konoshima, ‘The ‘sails of ships’: Love and Loss in Dickens’s Landscape’ 

– Alice Remmington, ‘A Wonderful Spectacle of Failure and Helplessness’: Bradley Headstone and the Tragicomedy of Visual Identity in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend’

Chair: Tbc 

1.15pm LUNCH (own arrangements) 

2.30pm READINGS

2.45pm PARALLELPANELS

A) Art in Dickens

– Deborah Siddoway, ‘Seabeaches and Noodles: The Use of Art in Hard Times’

– Aku Youse, ‘Framing the Figure: Portraiture, Identity, and Narrative Function in Dickens’s Illustrated Novels’ 

– Francesca Orestano, ‘Victorian Baroque and Dickens: Contexts, Impressions, Realization’ 

Chair: Tbc

B) Making Art of Dickens

– Anita Fernandez Young, ‘Charles Dickens’s Afterlife in Ceramics: A Hierarchy of Potters and a Barometer of Taste’ 

– Melisa Klimaszewski, ‘Black Scrooge: Francine Haskins’ African American Illustrations of A Christmas Carol’

– Gerry Mooney, ‘The Challenges and Process of Creating New Illustrations for Bleak House’ 

Chair: Tbc 

4.00pm Tea/Coffee

4.30pm PLENARY  

Juliet John, ‘Dickens and the Arts’ 

Chair: Tbc 

5.30 CLOSE