University Dickens experts take part in travelling conference to celebrate birth of the great author

Dickens experts from the University will be among those gathering in Medway at the beginning of next week to mark the bicentenary of the great author's birth.

They will be talking part in a 'travelling' conference taking place in four major Dickens sites - including Chatham/Rochester.

The conference, titled Dickens and the Idea of 'Dickensian': A Tale of Four Cities, will involve academics from all over the world, and will arrive in Medway on 5 February after sessions in Paris and Boulogne/Condette. It will conclude in London on 8 February, the day after the bicentenary.

Conference participants will spend the first part of the day on 6 February visiting various Dickens locations in the area, including the Guildhall Museum in Rochester. The afternoon will be devoted to discussions of childhood and the idea of the Dickensian and conclude with a birthday-eve dinner in the St George’s Centre, Chatham Maritime.

One of the organisers of the Medway event, Dr Catherine Waters, of Kent's School of English, said: ‘A Tale of Four Cities aims at giving Dickens - and ourselves - the best 200th birthday bash possible.

‘In an Olympic year, we will be carrying the Dickens torch to take in four major Dickens sites in France and the UK.

‘Chatham and Rochester are the places where Dickens spent most of the first part of his childhood, during what seem to have been largely happy years when his convivial father was employed by the Navy as a pay clerk. The focus here, not unnaturally therefore, is the Dickensian ideal of the Child,' said Dr Waters, who is Reader in Victorian Studies.