Earlier this year, I chatted one-on-one with author, art historian, and public speaker Lucinda Hawksley, who is a patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London. Hawksley is the great-great-great granddaughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens and has written many books about 19th and 20th figures, including Dickens and Christmas, Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy Of A Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, and Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens’s Artistic Daughter. In June 2022, she released her latest book, Dickens and Travel: The Start of Modern Travel Writing, detailing Charles’ interest in other countries and the trips he took.
When Hawksley was in grade school, she studied Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. She doesn’t recall negative experiences with teachers, but it wasn’t until university that she took a more scholarly look at Dickens’ writing. “I think children get put off a lot of writers that they might love if they didn’t get taught by teachers who go, ‘It’s on the curriculum and I hate this.’ I wish curriculums were able to reflect individual teacher’s loves because you get that love passed on to you.” […]
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