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The Dickens Society

@dickenssociety.bsky.social
1.4K followers 108 following 103 posts

Bluesky page for the international Dickens Society www.dickenssociety.org

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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Join us in July 2027 for the 32 Annual Dickens Society Symposium: "Dickens Rocks"! This symposium will be held online and you can find the CFP here: www.dickenssociety.org/symposium
dickenssociety.org
Symposium — The Dickens Society
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
📢 New on our Blog, The Cricket: www.dickenssociety.org/the-cricket/...
dickenssociety.org
Mince Pies, Glühwein, and Victorian Nostalgia: The Dutch Dickens Festival — The Dickens Society
This post is contributed by Ella Staps, a student of English language and literature at Radboud University Nijmegen. Her primary research interests are Metamodernism, dystopian and utopian literature,...
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
*Journal of Victorian Culture* Graduate Student Essay Prize: Deadline 1 October 2026 #victorian #prizes #scholarship academic.oup.com/jvc/pages/es...
academic.oup.com
Essay Prize
The aim of the prize is to promote scholarship among postgraduate research students working on the Victorian period in any discipline in the UK and abroad. The
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Next meeting of the Gaskell Society (and by recording) is coming up on Sat 19 Sept. Helen Shay will discuss Gaskell’s relationship with her publishers, including Dickens. See below for details! #Dickens #ElizabethGaskell #Victorian #publishing
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Please find the 2027 NeMLA CFP for The Dickens Society organized by Diana Archibald here: cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S...
cfplist.com
View Session
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
📢📰 New on our blog, The Cricket: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Verse of Charles Dickens contributed by Lydia Craig www.dickenssociety.org/the-cricket/...
dickenssociety.org
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Verse of Charles Dickens — The Dickens Society
This blog is contributed by Lydia Craig. Lydia is Assistant Professor of English at Vincennes University and Associate Editor both&nbsp...
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
New on our blog, The Cricket 📣 Trailing Round with Dickens: An Enthusiast's Guide to Broadstairs by Carolyn Oulton ✍️🏻 www.dickenssociety.org/the-cricket/...
dickenssociety.org
Trailing Round With Dickens: An Enthusiast’s Guide To Broadstairs — The Dickens Society
This post is contributed by Carolyn Oulton, Professor of Victorian Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University. Carolyn's recent publications include Down from London: Seaside Reading in the Rai...
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Research Society for Victorian Periodicals @rs4vp.org · 25/07/2026
And that is a wrap on #RSVP2026 in Dublin! Sláinte! 🥂 Many many thanks to our host @tcddublin.bsky.social, organizers, keynote speakers, social media volunteers + attendees for an incredible conference! And ICYMI: get ready for #RSVP2027 in OTTAWA next year! 🇨🇦 Safe migrations home to all!
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Post-Symposium traces of Dickens still abound: “When he had read Oliver Twist Hartmann marvelled that Dickens had had such an acute understanding of the misery of boys.” — Anita Brookner, Latecomers #Dickenssociety2026 #Dickens #summerreads
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
A symposium first on day 3 of #Dickenssociety2026 : a double panel! Nora Schalkers & Matthias Bauer on the uses of ‘enlightenment’ in Dickens.
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Ed Grimble @edwardfgrimble.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Céline Prest gives a dynamic & deft consideration of ‘“I don’t know nothink”: Jo’s Shakespearean Heath of the Mind in Bleak House’. Jo is a tangle of negation and affirmation of thought; he wanders ‘in a labyrinth of signs and symbols’; he bears the grime & traces of the city. #DickensSociety2026
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Céline Prest defines Jo’s not knowing “nothink” as equating to his not existing. Jo is continually defined by negative terms and his body gradually loses its integrity through the narrator’s description. #Dickenssociety2026
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Ed Grimble @edwardfgrimble.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Football woes in Aarhus dispelled by a cold plunge, and three fabulous papers this morning on Dickensian ‘enlightenment’; Bleak House’s Jo’s knowing ‘nothink’; and performance, dandyism, and deceit. Thanks to Nora Schalkers, Matthias Bauer, Céline Prest, and Anita Fernandez Young #DickensSociety2026
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Sailing away with our final speaker of the Symposium, Cathy Waters, who is speaking on “Charles Dickens and George Eliot by the Seaside.” #Dickensociety2026 #GeorgeEliot
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Rounding out our wonderful #Dickenssociety2026 panels with Jeremy Parrott discussing Dickens and the application of “Greek principles of order and harmony” to public buildings in London.
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Michael D. Lewis and Chris Louttit now shift to Q&A, both having addressed echoes of Dickens in Ali Smith: The Seasonal Quartet offers the “politics of the moment”; Artful gives us a “personal story” & “experience of loss,” in which Oliver Twist is “a form of therapy.” — Louttit #Dickenssociety2026
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Now at #DickensSociety2026 Anita Fernandez Young is looking at how characters in Dickens perform for the reader but also for one another - clothes and standards of dress playing a important role
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
“life becomes illegible outside of capitalism”: Michael D. Lewis on Ali Smith and Dickens. #Dickenssociety2026
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Starting the final day of #DickensSociety2026 with Nora Schalkers & Matthias Bauer looking at enlightenment in Dickens
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Ed Grimble @edwardfgrimble.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
On our second day in Aarhus, Emma Linford throws us into the comic & contentious Victorian courtroom, exploring ‘“Breach of Promise” in Dickens: Legal and Psychological Dimensions in Victorian England’. Here truth, spectacle, private, and public blur. @dickenssociety.bsky.social #DickensSociety2026
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Ed Grimble @edwardfgrimble.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
After which @sophiajochem.bsky.social offered a thoughtful, thorough, and enormously thought-provoking discussion of abortion narratives in Dickens’ ‘Dombey and Son’. #DickensSociety2026
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Ed Grimble @edwardfgrimble.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
And our first panel was brought to a patient and moving close with Carolyn Vellenga Berman’s talk on ‘Trauma Thought and the Fragmented Self in ‘David Copperfield’’: what does it mean to suppress, encounter, avoid, and repair? How do we heal and ‘suture’ the fragmented self? #DickensSociety2026
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Sophia Jochem @sophiajochem.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
On the second day of #Dickenssociety2026 Ahmed Diaa Dardir explores what he calls the 'orgiastic paradox' in A Tale of Two Cities. May the ecstatic, intoxicating frenzies begin!
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Sophia Jochem @sophiajochem.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Now Aleksandar Stevic looks into Dr. Manette as a personification of A Tale of Two Cities' neurotic response to the violence of revolution. Miss Pross emerges as one of the novel's unlikely psychiatrists in this reading at #Dickenssociety2026
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Sophia Jochem @sophiajochem.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Because we just can't get enough of A Tale of Two Cities at #Dickenssociety2026: Yizhou Feng reads the novel alongside Wei Yi's 1913 A Tale, in which 'patriots' become a 'riotous mob'!
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Michelle Allen Emerson speaking about Edwin Stanley Brookes, Dickensian actor, elocution teacher, & psychical researcher, who was witness to “Dickensian Miracle.” After losing his voice before a show, 👻 Dickens lended his voice to Brookes a mere 30 minutes prior to the recital. #Dickenssociety2026
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Virginia Zimmerman discussing homemade children’s literature, including the Gad’s Hill Gazette’s (produced by Dickens’s younger teenage sons) story on the death of the Dickens’ family dog, Turk. #Dickenssociety2026
Louisa May Alcott’s homemade newspaper. Gad’s Hill Gazette printing of the death of Dickens’s dog, Turk.
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saramalton.bsky.social @saramalton.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Magdalena Pypeć reads Hard Times through the Faust legend, seeing Tom’s engagement with Harthouse a transaction with a “demon familiar” who arrives in Coketown when the town most resembles hell.🔥🔥🔥 #Dickenssociety2026
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Prof Michaela Mahlberg @michamahlberg.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
At #Dickenssociety2026 we hear from @decadentdickens.bsky.social about ghosts, the communication between the living and the dead, and how Dickens believed in ‘the trance state’
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Leon Litvack shared these wonderful handouts examining the emendations in the Oxford Edition of “Our Mutual Friend”
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Prof Michaela Mahlberg @michamahlberg.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Now at #DickensSociety2026 Angelika Zirker looking at the relationship of ‘truth’ and ‘trust’ in Bleak House. The combination of quantitative & qualitative methods is key
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
“Typographical Exuberance” of serial installments offer excitement for the reader (see below) but Joel Brattin also examines the lack of consistency in Dickens’s textually exuberant writing: Pocket-Breaches or Pocket Breeches? The world may never know. #Dickenssociety2026
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saramalton.bsky.social @saramalton.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
“Ever the best of friends…” So glad to be here in Aarhus as things get underway for #DickensSociety2026
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saramalton.bsky.social @saramalton.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Dickens, photography, and the theatre take centre stage in Daniel Novak’s talk on The Old Curiosity Shop, “The Magic Reel.” #dickenssociety2026
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Natalie McKnight on Dickens’ tendencies to deconstruct binaries: the Shakespearean wise fools, Mr. Dick & Dora, become more emotionally intelligent than the hero of his own novel with their “the mind[s] of the heart”. #Dickenssociety2026
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Meoghan Cronin discussing narrators of ‘The Signal-Man’ and Sarah Smith’s ‘The Traveling Post-Office’ of Mugby Junction: each narrator has a compulsion to solve the mystery. They imagine they are subjective but they are not. #Dickenssociety2026
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Wiktoria Pierzak outlined alternative family models: social surrogacy, neighborly adoption, & families of choice. Pierzak explained how David abandons his alternative lifestyle & childhood with social outlier, Betsy, in favor of social normalcy. #Dickenssociety2026
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
‘Dickens Thinking on His Feet’: Edward Grimble discussed how aggression peppers Dickens’ descriptions of walking. The imaginative labor required of him to write was difficult to endure; the need to walk the streets was bound to his writing. #Dickenssociety2026
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Sophia Jochem @sophiajochem.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Now at #Dickenssociety2026: Caterina Colomba considers how the very many Dickenses of Neo-Victorian fiction can help reshape our understanding of imperial History.
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Lillian Nader: the brain as the “organ of the mind” versus a “temporary housing for the soul.” Elliotson, intimacy with God, and phrenology all weigh into Dickens’ thoughts & were especially on his mind during “Barnaby Rudge” with John Willet and Barnaby: material brain vs soul #Dickenssociety2026
John Elliotson. “Human Physiology”, 1835A graph showing heavier use of the word “brain” in Dickens during the years of his friendship with Elliotson
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Rob Jacklosky dissects Dickens’s humor, pointing out that comedy is structured through incongruity and juxtaposition, and it’s a meeting point between two incompatible frames of reference: to see the world as it is AND to see it slant. #Dickenssociety2026
Slide highlighting Dickens’ letter to John Forster re. “Great Expectations” and Dickens’ comedic crafting.
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Sophia Jochem @sophiajochem.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Let's go #Dickenssociety2026 🥳
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Katie Bell 🇵🇸 @decadentdickens.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Mark Cronin on the verbose, amorous description of Belle’s daughter in “X-mas Carol”: “did he not know he was speaking out loud?!” 😂 The narrator of ‘Carol’ exists in an undefined space—fully realized at times, rhetorical device at others. It changes with each Stave. #Dickenssociety2026
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Sophia Jochem @sophiajochem.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Robert Sirabian ist kicking off the #Dickenssociety2026 meeting with a fascinating paper on the different ways in which people meet in Dickens.
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Day 1 begins with an opening from Dominic Rainsford and Dickensian connections to Denmark: Knud Sorensen’s text “Charles Dickens: Linguistic Innovator” (1985) and illustrator, Christian Kongstad Peterson’s wonderful obsession with Dickensian aunts.
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
And we’re off! We had a wonderful pre-symposium reception with a beautiful spread of food, glorious food! #Dickenssociety2026
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The Dickens Society @dickenssociety.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
This week, we will be posting regular updates from our annual symposium, held this year in Aarhus, Denmark! For speakers and attendees, free use of #Dickenssociety2026 is welcome!
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Chris Louttit @drchrislouttit.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Enjoying catching up with your posts about 'conferencing, bicycally' to #DickensSociety2026! Very impressive. And here I was feeling virtuous about travelling to the Dickens Symposium by train!
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Sophia Jochem @sophiajochem.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
#Dickenssociety2026 falls into that category. Aarhus is just a few hours' train ride from my home in Hamburg. But if I've learned anything today it's that Aarhus is in no way close by! I cycled 112k but it's going to take me six more days to get there! My sense of scale is just completely messed up.
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