By the start of the Victorian era, London was home to nearly 2 million people, a number that expanded to more than 6 million by 1901, the year of Queen Victoria's death. This immense growth made the city an astonishing study in the varieties of human experience—the perfect place for a novelist to find his voice. Charles Dickens did just that in the 1830s.

Born in 1812, Dickens spent most of his life in a rapidly expanding London. As perhaps the most lauded of Victorian writers and a perennial classroom favorite, Dickens gives us a window into the past. His fiction and journalism capture the complexities of Victorian life, while continuing to resonate with meaning today.

London in the 19th century was a city of contrasts. It was a bustling, diverse, and vibrant urban center that was a hub of culture and innovation. It was also a place of great suffering and starvation, of child labor, and soot-filled skies. Dickens himself experienced life on both sides of the “great gulf” that separated rich from poor—His own life was a blueprint that informed rags-to-riches elements in his stories, from Oliver Twist to Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. The everyday experiences of working-class Londoners provided an inexhaustible source of literary material for a prolific writer looking to capture life on the page—and improve life beyond the bounds of fiction.

In London in the Time of Dickens, you’ll get the unique opportunity to experience the British capital through the eyes of a literary master whose work is inextricably tied to the city and its rich history. Throughout 12 lectures taught by Professor Lillian Nayder of Bates College, you’ll tour the city of London in a time of rapid transformation through the life and work of Charles Dickens, uncovering the history of the metropolis, while also witnessing the everyday experiences of Londoners from all walks of life as Dickens represents them.

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