Extra/Ordinary Women
Special exhibition opens 11th February
11th February – 6th September 2026
Behind every great man, there’s a great woman, so the saying goes. Behind Charles Dickens, however, there were many great women supporting and inspiring him. Drawing on the world’s most comprehensive collection of historic Dickens material, Extra/Ordinary Women will celebrate the real women who influenced Dickens and reveal the clues which help match several of them to their fictional counterparts.
Highlights include a beautiful portrait of the Dickens daughters, Katey and Mamie, on display for the very first time. You’ll see Catherine Dickens’s cookbook, not only reminding us of her important role as a society hostess, helping to establish Dickens’s ‘celebrity’ but also that she was a published author in her own right. Also on display is a draft preface to an 1857 manual for educating working class children with edits by Dickens in blue ink. This draft was penned by Angela Burdett Coutts, heiress to the Coutts banking fortune, one of the richest women in the world, and a co-philanthropist with Dickens. You’ll also encounter items owned by Ellen Ternan, best known today for her twelve-year extra-marital relationship with Dickens.
The women in Dickens’s life shaped the man and influenced his female characters. Yet in his fiction, Dickens has been accused of reinforcing Victorian ideals of womanhood. Often interpreted as weak and powerless, Dickens’s female characters were led by what his readers wanted and were not a fair representation of their real-life counterparts. Artists, writers, actors, philanthropists, Dickens knew plenty of extraordinary women, including those in his own family. This exhibition celebrates these women and brings their stories to light.
Museum admission includes the historic London home of Charles Dickens and access to the exhibition Extra/Ordinary Women.