Dickens in the Reading Room

Sherry Ashworth, established author, Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Portico's writer-in-residence, reviews the first of her three Dickens Workshops (attendance of the workshops is free!) which took place in the Library last week, kicking off our celebration of Dickens' bicentenary: 

There is possibly no more blissful experience than sitting in the reading room on a late spring afternoon, surrounded by like-minded Portico readers, talking about Dickens.

And that is precisely how a group of us entertained ourselves for the first of a series of Dickens workshops.  ‘Workshops’ is a bit of a misnomer – participants had read Hard Times, but were also supplied with extracts from other novels, and our conversations ranged widely, as we tried to ascertain what Dickens had to tell us about the subject of education – a mission beautifully punctuated by tea and coffee half-way through.

So what did we decide?  That Hard Times is a fascinating but flawed novel – there was a general consensus that Elizabeth Gaskell was better on Manchester and industrial poverty.  That Dickens valued imagination above facts, hated all teachers who used bullying as a technique, didn’t much enjoy mental arithmetic and rated one-to-one tutoring above the serried ranks of the classroom.  And the best, most modern teacher in Dickens was none other than Fagin – who uses encouragement, drama, peer support and gin and sausages to educate young Oliver.

If you want to join us next time, we are meeting at 5 on Thursday May 24^th  having read (most of!) Our Mutual Friend in order to revisit the cliché that Dickens can’t do women.  Oh, can’t he?!  *rolls up sleeves*

Sherry's latest novel - a Jewish comedy of manners - is available exclusively as a Kindle title on Amazon  - Good Recipes and Bad Women