Dickens and Travel: The Start of Modern Travel Writing

From childhood, Charles Dickens was fascinated by tales from other countries and other cultures, and he longed to see the world. In Dickens and Travel, Lucinda Hawksley looks at the journeys made by the author - who is also her great great great grandfather. Although Dickens is usually perceived as a London author, in the 1840s he whisked his family away to live in Italy for year, and spent several months in Switzerland. Some years later he took up residence in Paris and Boulogne (where he lived in secret with his lover). In addition to travelling widely in Europe, he also toured America twice, performed onstage in Canada and, before his untimely death, was planning a tour of Australia. Dickens and Travel enters into the world of the Victorian traveller and looks at how Charles Dickens’s journeys influenced his writing and enriched his life. AUTHOR: Lucinda Hawksley has written more than twenty books, including biographies of the Victorian artists Lizzie Siddal, Kate Perugini (nee Dickens) and Princess Louise. Her other titles include Dickens and Christmas, Bitten by Witch Fever, Letters of Great Women and March, Women, March. As a travel writer and former travel editor, Lucinda has long been fascinated by Charles Dickens’s travels and the ease with which he moved around the globe - as well as why this is such a little-known aspect of Dickens’s life. Lucinda is also a broadcaster, a public speaker, and a Patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London.
32 b/w illustrations