Exhibition Talk - Lucinda Dickens Hawksley on Fanny Burnett

Date: Thursday 20th August 2026
Time: 12.30pm (UK time).
Duration: Approximately 1 hour.

Location: Choose either

• Attend onsite at 49 Doughty Street, London (limited capacity) 
• Attend virtually on Zoom. Register to receive joining instructions.

To watch this talk 'on demand' simply book a virtual ticket and you'll get the link sent to you as soon as its ready. 

This hybrid talk is free to attend onsite or online but tickets must be booked in advance.

Click here to book an ONSITE ticket.

Click here to book a VIRTUAL ticket.

As an independent charity we welcome any donation supporting the future work of the Charles Dickens Museum. Click here to donate.

Should you have any difficulties or questions, please email the Events team; events@dickensmuseum.com.

Please note that all event tickets are non-refundable.

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley is the great-great-great granddaughter of Charles and Catherine Dickens. She is an historian, author and broadcaster having published titles such as Charles Dickens and his Circle, Dickens's Artistic Daughter: The Life and Loves of Katey Dickens, and Letters of Great Women. She is patron of the Charles Dickens Museum and President of the Dickens Fellowship.

On Thursday 20 August 2026 Lucinda will be joining us at the Charles Dickens Museum to speak about Fanny Burnett. Frances ‘Fanny’ Dickens was the oldest child in the Dickens family and adored by her younger brother, Charles. As children they did everything together, until 1823, when Fanny was accepted as a boarding pupil at the Royal Academy of Music to train as a musician. The siblings remained close throughout their lives, with Charles very proud of his sister’s achievements. Fanny also inspired several characters in her brother’s novels. Come and hear Fanny’s great great great great granddaughter, Lucinda Hawksley, talk about this unfairly forgotten Victorian singer.

There will be the opportunity for a short Q+A following the talk.

What’s the Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition about?

Like many great writers, Dickens wrote what he knew and, as a result, has produced some of the greatest stories in the English language. But there were many extraordinary women in Dickens’s life and yet, somehow, they never made it from real life onto the page. The female characters that he created don’t reveal the relationships he had with independent-minded, characterful women, as Dickens tended to play with and reinforce Victorian stereotypes. This exhibition will highlight these differences between the extraordinary women he knew and the ordinary and idealised women he wrote. It will give the real-life women a voice beyond Dickens’s pen.

At 48 Doughty Street, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) wrote the stories which made him an international superstar. When Dickens and his young family moved into the house in the 1830s, he was a budding author, unknown to most, but by the time the family left, Dickens was world famous, having written a trio of wildly successful novels - The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby – in his study at home. This Victorian literary house is now the Charles Dickens Museum. Purchase a museum admission ticket to explore the historic house and special exhibition.