Walking through the doors of London’s Charles Dickens Museum is always a special moment. This handsome, tall London townhouse – middle class by Victorian standards but practically palatial to visitors today – was the crucible in which a young, ascending Charles Dickens wrote himself into international superstardom.
It is here that The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby spilled from his pen. And it is here, as the new exhibition Extra/Ordinary Women compellingly demonstrates, that Dickens lived in constant proximity to the intelligent and talented women who shaped his imagination, his domestic life and his enduring theatricality.
The Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition offers insights to many of these women. His wife, Catherine Dickens, who also wrote within these walls. His sister, Mary Hogarth, whose sudden death here devastated him. His sister-in-law, housekeeper and adviser Georgina Hogarth, who remained his rock for the rest of his life.
