e are pleased to announce the call for papers for this year’s Dickens Day on the topic of ‘Dickens and Family’. Coinciding with the 180th anniversary of the publication of Dombey and Son in October 1846, the day will focus on how the concept of family informed Dickens’s life and works. Dickens’s novels show us the best and worst of family life; the intrinsic support and love demonstrated amongst the Cratchits is wildly contrasted with the in-fighting of the Chuzzlewits. Then there are the groups that challenge our notion of the traditional nuclear unit: the found family of the Pickwick Club, or guardians and adoptive parents such as Dan Peggotty or Miss Havisham.
Beyond the novels, Dickens relationship with his own family was complicated. There was the ongoing tension with his parents and siblings over money and debt; his great expectations and high demands for his children; and, of course, the conflict between his public persona as a champion of the domestic scene and the separation from his wife. Discussions of all these points, and their impact on Dickens’s writing and legacy, will be considered.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on any aspect of the theme and warmly encourage Dickensians and scholars of all backgrounds and career stages to apply. Topics could include but are not limited to:
- Parents and children: responsibility, nurture vs nature, and inheritance
- Siblings: rivalries, hierarchies, doubles, and mutual support
- Gender roles and expectations, both subverted and upheld
- Found and extended families: adoptive parents, guardians, friends
- Love, marriage, and courtship
- Genealogy, heritage and genetics
- Family and class, public perceptions of private life
- Art imitating life: Dickens’s own familial relations
- The generation gap: changing ideas and familial duty
- The Victorian child: education, training, and development
Please send proposals (maximum 300 words) together with a brief biography (maximum 100 words) to the Dickens Day committee. The deadline for paper proposals is Monday 15 June 2026.
For further information and to book your place, please click here
Created 26 May 2026
Last modified 26 May 2026