Dickens View of London Through "Bleak House"

This stop of the map tour will focus on the Thames River, specifically the spot on the river crossed by the Blackfriars Bridge. Dickens does not explicitly name the Thames River in Bleak House, but his use of the word aits (small river islands, especially those found in the Thames) in “Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river…”  (Bleak House, Chapter 1) combined with the proximity of other locations mentioned in the excerpt to the Thames, it can be assumed that is the river mentioned. Even though it was not mentioned…

The next stop on our tour is going to be Holborn Hill, which is a street located in Holborn, London. This street has developed into a major tourist attraction over the last several centuries, but its beginning originated in 1417 ( Thornbury). During this time, Henry V decided he wanted to make improvements to Holborn and decided to fund the pavement of a road, which in later years would be known as Holborn Hill (Thornbury). From this point, many improvements continued to be made to the city of Holborn and to Holborn Hill specifically. Many shops, bars, inns, and houses were added to the…

Lincoln's Inn Hall is located in Holborn, a district in central London, and is an important part of both the history of London and of England as a whole ("History of the Inn"; "Inns of Court"). It was established around 1422, though parts of it existed all the way back in the 13th century and it has no official establishment date, instead sharing an establishment date with the other Inns of Court ("History of the Inn"). It has remained at the center of Britian's legal profession since its inception. It is also depicted as the center of the corrupting fog of…

In Bleak House, Temple Bar is where the high Lord Chancellor sits “in his High Court of Chancery.” (Dickens). This is important to the story because, at the time, the Temple Bar was the ceremonial entrance to London, (temple bar trust) so the chancellor is gatekeeping London from the common people through self-importance and the law in the passage. It shows that he thinks he and his own position are the most important in London. So Dickens pictures him sitting here on his stool, thinking about how high and mighty he feels above the rest of the Londoners in the story. In other…

The final stop on the tour will focus on Greenwich, in which Charles Dickens wrote of as, “fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards”, in his novel Bleak House(Dickens, Ch. 1). While Dickens portrays Greenwich in a darker shade, Greenwich has become a popular tourist location known for its rich history and culture of royalty, seafaring, and scientific discovery(Visit Greenwich).

Greenwich has humble beginnings as a fishing and farm settlement– but it soon became known to royals. In the early 16th century Henry VII came to…