David Brownell

David Brownell is a retired editor and writer based in the San Francisco bay area. Having discovered the Dickens Project through a newspaper article in 2007, he began attending the annual Dickens Universe conference: “I enjoyed the Universe so much that I wanted to pay back,” he said of his involvement with the Friends of the Dickens Project. David grew up reading Dickens, wrote his undergraduate thesis on Great Expectations (his favorite), and wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the nineteenth-century novel. In addition to his engagement with the Friends of the Dickens Project, David works at 826 Valencia’s afterschool tutoring program. David continues to come to the Dickens Universe each year to meet “interesting people, some of whom become good friends.” He enjoys “the pleasure of getting closer to a work I care about and learning more through what others have to say” over the course of the weeklong conference.