Places in the Novels of Charles Dickens

Victorian London

Charles Dickens created many memorable characters, such as David Copperfield and Ebenezer Scrooge. But his novels also featured inanimate characters, the slow moving Circomlocution Office in Little Dorrit, the poorhouse in Oliver Twist. These places are in fact very important to Dickens' novels.

This article explores in debt some of the most memorable places described by Dickens.

The Marshalsea Prison This infamous debtors' prison housed those who could not pay their debts. It was not unusual for people to spend decades in jail over small amounts of money, and more often than not the they never saw freedom again. They died from malnutrition and squalor in the jail. Charles Dickens' own father was imprisoned at the Marshalsea when Dickens was 12 years old, and this left Dickens emotionally scarred. He wrote about the prison often in many of his books. More ...