The Dickens Birthday Lecture 2023 - Professor Cathy Waters

by Laura Burden

Each year, PGS supports the Portsmouth branch of the Charles Dickens Fellowship to run a lecture, free to the public, on the Saturday closest to Dickens’ birthday. This year, Professor Cathy Waters, who is President of the Dickens Fellowship and taught at the University of Kent, gave a talk entitled: 'Fairy palaces' and 'Wonderful Toys': Machine Dreams in Household Words. 

Household Words was a magazine, edited by Charles Dickens, that appeared weekly between 1850 and 1859. It contained serialised novels, including by Dickens himself, but also non fiction pieces. The magazine was published in an era in which about half the population could not sign their one name on their marriage record, and so was aimed at a middle class audience; however, it focused on injustices and campaigns for social improvement.

Professor Waters began her talk by reading the passage from Hard Times that describes the approach to “Coketown”. This is often seen as the quintessential passage in nineteenth fiction of the blight of industrialisation on English cities. She went on to point out, however, that many articles in Household Words celebrated industry instead of demonising it. One regular contributor was Harriet Martineau, who had the connections to enable her to visit factories and write firsthand accounts of “The Magic Troughs at Birmingham” (electroplating), “Household Scenery” (wallpaper manufacture) and “Rainbow Making” (how the jacquard loom, pictured, made ribbons in a factory in Coventry).The titles of the articles show that, although most writers anthologise the description of Coketown, the magazine Dickens oversaw often celebrated industry.

However, Martineau eventually parted ways with Household Words: when Dickens campaigned for better working conditions in factories, she sided with the employers’ desire to keep costs down. Dickens commissioned Henry Morley, a campaigner, to write articles such as “Ground in the Mill” and explain how children were losing life and limb to their “masters”, the machines.

Overall, Household Words was not anti-industry and the creativity and productivity of Britain’s factories was celebrated in Dickens’ magazine. What Dickens was focused on was using his periodical to tackle unsafe and dangerous working practices.

Professor Waters’ article linked to the talk can be found here: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/54906/1/DQ%20Dec%2008%20Waters%20draft%201.pdf 

All copies of the magazine Household Words can be viewed here for free https://www.djo.org.uk/household-words.html