London Attractions 19th Century Tourist Guide

Charles Dickens Jr. on Victorian Places of Interest

Jul 22, 2009

Dickens Jr. produced an unusual Dictionary of London, a tourist guide, useful today to the researcher of Victorian London, its famous streets and social history.

The Dickens's Dictionary of London was the main book of Charles Dickens Jr. (1837-1896), the son of the famous novelist. It was first published in 1879 and re-edited yearly until 1896. It is a useful source today to social historians for its social commentary, descriptions of famous attractions, London streets and places of interest, social habits and extensive classified lists.

This Unconventional Handbook, as Dickens calls it, is a kind of 19thC tourist guide or a Directory. It starts with A1, “a common expression, synonymous with perfect or excellent” and ends with Zoological Gardens, “the largest and... best-arranged collection of wild beasts and birds in the world”. It is a historical resource that is informative as it is opinionated.

London Attractions in Dickens Tourist Guide

Dickens Jr.’s London Dictionary contains all the usual lists that exist today in publications such as the Yellow Pages. There are lists of banks, churches, charities, clubs, companies, markets, theatres, restaurants, transport. However, Dickens gives his dictionary or handbook a more personal tone by commenting on attractions, streets and buildings more extensively and including such entries as to give his handbook the character of a tourist guide.

Examples of the Dictionary’s entries include Victorian London places of interest such as, the Albert Hall, opened to the public in 1871, a “huge building of elliptical form in the style of the Italian Renaissance”, capable of accommodating some 8,000 concert-goers. Its large amphitheatre-like interior Dickens finds “grotesquely inappropriate, except for gladiatorial exhibitions”.

Buckingham Palace he finds to be “a building as devoid of architectural pretensions as could well be found even in London”, the Houses of Parliament “an immense Tudor Gothic building”, its side towards the Abbey “marred by the ugly and incongruous mass of the Law Courts”.

Dickens on Famous London Streets

Bond Street was as fashionable in the 19thC as it is today and Dickens describes this famous London street as a place where the “beaux... strolled up and down, criticising the exterior of others and showing off their own”. London visitors should also go to Covent Garden to marvel at the vegetable and fruit and flower market and they are sure to “go away... with the conviction that to see flowers and fruits in perfection it is necessary to come to London”.

The famous Oxford Street is “the finest... the longest and straightest of the main arteries of London”; Pall Mall, “a street of palaces” with an appearance of quiet splendour. Piccadilly is the “nearest approach to the Parisian boulevard of which London can boast” and has “a bright and lively, not to say kaleidoscopic, appearance” - which still holds true today.

According to Dickens Dictionary of London, Regent Street is one of the finest in the capital and “no thoroughfare in London is more thronged... or present a gayer aspect that this street where all classes of pedestrians, “from the duchess to the work-girl”, surge and jostle.

Victorian London Social History Resource

The London Dictionary of Charles Dickens Jr. contains entries (among which some humorous) that are useful to the researcher of Victorian London social history. Under B there is advice for those who have suffered a Black Eye. Under C there are instructions on how to use the famous London Cabs, warnings against Carriage Thieves, who infest London streets, and information about popular Chess Clubs and Chops and Steaks, “a peculiar English... meal”.

The Unconventional Handbook of Dickens also provides advice on different pastimes such as Angling, Bicycling, Billiards and Horse Riding; comments about Amusements, Beggars and Bohemia; where to find the best Oysters and what to expect from the different London Markets; Householder Hints; How to Dress and where to eat.

Dickens's Dictionary of London: An Unconventional Handbook (edited by Charles Dickens, the Younger), Charles Dickens: London 1879.

First fascimile edition in 1972 as A London Dictionary and Guide Book for 1879 by Howard Baker Press.

The copyright of the article London Attractions 19th Century Tourist Guide in Historical Resources is owned by Lito Apostolakou. Permission to republish London Attractions 19th Century Tourist Guide in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.