Thursday, February 18, 2021 • 1:00-6:00 PM (GMT) • Online via Microsoft Teams Live
Charles Dickens left behind a remarkably complete record of his literary output, including handwritten drafts for most of the major novels, marked-up page proofs, working notes, and more. In addition, the V&A holds a wealth of artworks related to Dickens: original illustrations for many of the novels, portraits and photographs of the author, and a number of artworks inspired by Dickens’s characters. The Dickens archives present a unique resource for understanding the entire process of textual composition, production, reproduction, and dissemination. The ‘Deciphering Dickens’ project aims to create an accessible, interactive digital platform in order to share the full range of these extraordinary materials with a wider audience.
Join us for an afternoon exploring the V&A’s Dickens collections and discussing new ways in which we might read, edit and share historical materials in the digital age, both in Dickens's case and beyond. The ‘Deciphering Dickens’ team will discuss the project’s work to date, looking in detail at the museum’s Dickens collections and revealing some of the most recent discoveries the project has made. This will be followed by discussion panels exploring exciting new approaches to the ways in which we might read, edit, and share historical materials in the digital age, both in Dickens’s case and beyond. The panels will consider questions of editing, analysis, and accessibility, and explore some of the challenges and opportunities in using digital tools to study and share literary archives.
Speakers include Emily Bell (University of Leeds), Kathryn Sutherland (University of Oxford), Philip Palmer (The Morgan Library & Museum), Claire Wood (University of Leicester), John Drew (University of Buckingham), and Hugo Bowles (Università di Foggia). Welcome by Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A.
Registration: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/ aZxjXkWK/dickens-in-the- digital-age-feb-2021
Download the Program: Dickens in the Digital Age Symposium Programme (PDF)
