Michael Slater: Dickens and Childhood

Monday, 18 June 2012

11am - 8pm, V&A Museum of Childhood, London
Dickens was a perceptive observer of the stages of child development, and records his own incoherent and overwhelming feelings of love, joy, fear and pain in his great novels of childhood: David Copperfield and Great Expectations. He was himself the father of 10 children, one of whom died in infancy. His writing swarms with babies, infants and children, scrabbling their way to maturity in the bewildering adult world. The V&A Museum of Childhood is hosting a one-day conference on 'Dickens and Childhood'. The day will include walks, lectures, readings, and parallel sessions on topics that will appeal to students, Dickens experts, and the ‘common reader.’ The line-up of speakers includes the acclaimed Dickens biographer Michael Slater.

Time: 11am-8pm
Venue: V&A Museum of Childhood, London
Tickets: Whole day: £30 (£25 student concs); Afternoon plus reception: £25 (£20 student concs); Reception plus symposium: £12 (£10 student concs). For more info visit the Childhood Museum website or download the Dickens and Childhood Leaflet.

About 'Charles Dickens' by Michael Slater

This long-awaited biography, twenty years after the last major account, uncovers Dickens the man through the profession in which he excelled. Drawing on a lifetime's study of this prodigiously brilliant figure, Michael Slater explores the personal and emotional life, the high-profile public activities, the relentless travel, the charitable works, the amateur theatricals and the astonishing productivity. But the core focus is Dickens' career as a writer and professional author, covering not only his big novels but also his phenomenal output of other writing - letters, journalism, shorter fiction, plays, verses, essays, writings for children, travel books, speeches, and scripts for his public readings, and the relationships among them.

Slater's account, rooted in deep research but written with affection, clarity, and economy, illuminates the context of each of the great novels while locating the life of the author within the imagination that created them. It highlights Dickens' boundless energy, his passion for order and fascination with disorder, his organizational genius, his deep concern for the poor and outrage at indifference towards them, his susceptibility towards young women, his love of Christmas and fairy tales, and his hatred of tyranny. Richly and precisely illustrated with many rare images, this masterly work on the complete Dickens, man and writer, becomes the indispensable guide and companion to one of the greatest novelist.