V&A Research Projects
Deciphering Dickens
Deciphering the Dickens manuscripts.
Latest Updates
About the Project
Using the unparalleled collection of original manuscripts and proofs for most of Dickens’ novels held by the V&A, this project develops and trials ways in which Dickens’s creative process can be opened out online.
Context
The V&A holds one of the most important authorial archives in the English-speaking world and yet it is largely unknown. Dickens left behind a remarkably complete record of his literary output, including handwritten drafts for most of the major novels; marked-up page proofs, serial publications, illustrations, theatrical adaptations and records of his own legendary performances. The Dickens archives present a unique resource for understanding the entire process of textual composition, production, reproduction and dissemination. The only issue is, the manuscripts require deciphering.
Aim
This project aims to reveal an author's mind at work, using crowd-sourcing methods and online collaboration with Dickens' scholars, fans, students, coders as well as those working at the cutting edge of digital humanities and interactive design. We hope to untangle the dense thicket of Dickens' revisions allowing us to see his first thoughts, changes of mind and innumerable refinements of expression.
Outcomes
'Deciphering Dickens' aims to develop its plans for an online archive and interactive platform that will enable deep connections to be made with Dickens' manuscripts – between people, across time, and throughout the world. We seek to create a digital prototype which can be searched through key words and phrases, providing proof of concept for further funding to develop the full platform which we can apply to all the manuscripts as well as similar objects in our collection.
Project Outputs
Forthcoming Publication: Deciphering Dickens, by Douglas Dodds & Emma Curry
In: Digital Dickens, edited by Emily Bell, Peter Orford and Claire Wood. York: White Rose University Press, 2025
Deciphering Dickens Team at The Dickens Universe 2019
Deciphering Dickens Project Leads Douglas Dodds (Senior Curator, Word & Image Department, V&A) and Professor John Bowen (Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature, University of York) will be at this year's Dickens Universe event at UC Santa Cruz (14-20 July 2019). Doug and John will be back by popular demand after their successful session at The Dickens Universe 2018 during which they crowdsourced transcription of pages from Dickens' manuscript for 'Little Dorrit'. They will be continuing the project this year and build on what they learned last year with some new resources and knowledge. Old and new hands welcome!
Project updates
6 May 2021
Dickens in the digital age
On the 18 February, the ‘Deciphering Dickens’ team hosted ‘Dickens in the Digital Age’, an exciting online symposium that brought together academics and museum professionals working on a range of digital projects
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1 February 2021
Little Dorrit ‘Transcribe-a-Thon’
On Thursday 10 December, the ‘Deciphering Dickens’ project hosted a small group of Dickens, manuscript, and handwriting enthusiasts to take part in an online ‘transcribe-a-thon’ of Little Dorrit. As well as sharing Dickens’s manuscripts with...
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3 October 2018
Deciphering Little Dorrit at the Dickens Universe, July 2018
I’m the co-lead for one of the V&A Research Institute’s current projects, Deciphering Dickens. The Museum holds the manuscripts of many of Charles Dickens’s novels, plus the author’s working notes, printers’ proofs and early editions...
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The Team
Douglas Dodds
Senior Curator, Word and Image Department, V&A
Professor John Bowen
Professor of 19th Century Literature, University of York
Emma Curry
Research Fellow, V&A Research Institute
Aine McNicholas
Research Fellow, V&A Research Institute
Partner Organisations
University of York
Oxford University Press
Dickens Museum
Events
Dickensian Bodies/Embodying Dickens (London Nineteenth Century Studies Seminar)
Emma Curry explores Dickens's the relationships between bodies and language in his Dickens's writing process, while Essaka Joshua (Notre Dame) looks at neurodiversity and the figure of Scrooge in this seasonally apt paper on A Christmas Carol.
Online
10 December 2021
Deciphering Dickens Workshop: A Christmas Carol (online, with the Morgan Library and Museum)
Join the “Deciphering Dickens” team and Morgan curator Philip Palmer on for an introduction to the project and virtual small group collaborative transcription sessions focused on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
Online, with the Morgan Library and Museum
22 November 2021
Deciphering A Christmas Carol, Dickens Universe, University of California, Santa Cruz
40th annual Dickens Universe gathering, featuring Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
Online
26 July 2021
Dickens in the Digital Age
Join us for an afternoon exploring the V&A’s Dickens collections and discussing exciting new approaches to the ways in which we might read, edit, and share historical materials in the digital age, both in Dickens’s case and beyond.
online
18 February 2021
Deciphering Dickens: Online Transcribe-a-thon: Little Dorrit
Join us in this online workshop in which we will take you through the deciphering process using our digital transcription software, From the Page. We will look at the manuscript of Little Dorrit in detail to reveal Dickens's first thoughts.
Online
10 December 2020
Deciphering Barnaby Rudge, Dickens Universe, University of California, Santa Cruz
39th annual Dickens Universe gathering, featuring Charles Dickens’s novel, Barnaby Rudge
University of California Santa Cruz
14 July 2019
Deciphering Little Dorrit, Dickens Universe, University of California, Santa Cruz
38th annual Dickens Universe gathering, featuring Charles Dickens’s novel, Little Dorrit
University of California, Santa Cruz
15 July 2018
A five-year programme of research projects and partnerships supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Each project acts as a case study for how we can use different research methods to explore and experiment with new ways of studying, displaying and accessibly storing its collections. VARI will join its experts with academic scholars, practicing artists, designers and makers and members of the general public and collaboratively we will discover new ways of accessing the V&A's objects.
