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27 - Educating the Victorians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

Patrick Brantlinger
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Sally Ledger
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Holly Furneaux
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
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Summary

For Dickens, few issues were more important than education. Because of his father's indebtedness, at age 11 his own education was interrupted when his family moved from Chatham to London. He had briefly and happily been a student at William Giles's school in Chatham, and he expected to attend another school after the move. Instead, with his parents in debtors' prison, he worked for several months in Warren's Blacking. Dickens felt ‘cast away’ during this traumatic time: ‘But for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.’ After a small inheritance enabled John Dickens to pay his debts, Charles returned to school for nearly three years, attending the Wellington House Academy, which he recollected in his 1851 essay, ‘Our School’. These experiences made him acutely aware of the personal and social value of education.

The short time Dickens spent in school was not unusual, however. Before mid century, few children went to school for more than two or three years. Like many others from the middle and working classes, Dickens was partly home-schooled – his mother taught him to read. Well-to-do parents often hired tutors or governesses. For the working class and the poor, schooling of any sort was a luxury rather than a necessity. Yet Britain was undergoing a ‘reading revolution’ as well as an industrial revolution.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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