The Little Midshipman with Professor Michael Slater

Professor Michael Slater MBE introduces the Little Midshipman. The shop sign was one of Dickens’s favourite landmarks on his long walks through London. Dickens features it in his novel Dombey and Son (1846-48) and elsewhere in his writing. The Little Midshipman is on display at the Charles Dickens Museum in London (dickensmuseum.com).

This is the third of three short videos in which the celebrated expert explores the relationship between the animate and inanimate in Dickens’s private and published writing. The first video can be found here and the second here. 

Professor Slater is a Fellow of Birkbeck University of London and Emeritus Professor in its Department of English and Humanities. He is one of the world’s most highly regarded Dickens scholars. He is a past President of the International Dickens Fellowship and of the Dickens Society of America, and former editor of ‘The Dickensian’. His internationally acclaimed books include Charles Dickens. A Life Defined by Writing (Yale UP, 2011), The Great Charles Dickens Scandal (Yale UP, 2012) and Dickens on America & The Americans (Edward Everett Root Publishers, September 2017).