Hope through the Smoke

Fog and smoke obscuring London from a distance was a sight that many travellers in the period would have seen when approaching the city. Dickens used fog to depict the beauty and vice of London living. In this image we can see Little Nell and her grandfather from The Old Curiosity Shop. On their escape from London, Dickens writes that on reaching a hill on the city’s outskirts, the cross of St Paul’s could be seen looming through the smoke. For Dickens, this image offers a beacon of hope.