Southwark College of Canons Lecture - Dickensland with Lee Jackson

Southwark Cathedral are delighted to welcome Dr Lee Jackson who will speak about his new book for our annual College of Canons lecture

Southwark Cathedral welcomes you to join us for our annual College of Canons lecture which this year will be delivered by Dr Lee Jackson who will be discussing his latest publication Dickensland: The Curious History of Dickens's London.

The intriguing history of Dickens's London, showing how tourists have reimagined and reinvented the Dickensian metropolis for more than 150 years.

Tourists have sought out the landmarks, streets, and alleys of Charles Dickens’s London ever since the death of the world-renowned author. Late Victorians and Edwardians were obsessed with tracking down the locations—dubbed “Dickensland”—that famously featured in his novels. But his fans were faced with a city that was undergoing rapid redevelopment, where literary shrines were far from sacred. Over the following century, sites connected with Dickens were demolished, relocated, and reimagined.

Lee Jackson traces the fascinating history of Dickensian tourism, exploring both real Victorian London and a fictional city shaped by fandom, tourism, and heritage entrepreneurs. Beginning with the late nineteenth century, Jackson investigates key sites of literary pilgrimage and their relationship with Dickens and his work, revealing hidden, reinvented, and even faked locations. From vanishing coaching inns to submerged riverside stairs, hidden burial grounds to apocryphal shops, Dickensland charts the curious history of an imaginary world.

Lee Jackson is a well-known expert on Victorian London. He is the author of Dirty Old London, Walking Dickens’ London, and Palaces of Pleasure. Lee has lectured on Victorian topics for libraries and museums throughout London and is an academic advisor to the Dickens Museum.

This talk will be in-person only and won't be streamed or recorded. Doors will open at 6.45pm and copies of Lee's publication will be on sale on the evening.

Attendees are more than welcome to join Cathedral clergy, the Cathedral choir and the College of Canons for Choral Evensong at 5.30pm prior to this lecture.

The College of Canons is composed of Honorary, Lay and Ecumenical Canons appointed by the Bishop of Southwark as well as a Residentiary Canon, and it supports the life of the Cathedral in many different ways. Canons are ambassadors for the Cathedral they serve