kent | A set of themed essays about Kent, a county in South East England, which include interactive maps and images. Kent has a rich history and provided inspiration for a number of writers and artists.

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One of the greatest Victorian novelists, Charles Dickens lived in Kent from 1816 to 1822; and again from 1856 to 1870.

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Finding Dickens Land

From Rochester to Broadstairs on the East coast – wherever you go you can be fairly certain that Dickens has been there before you.

Mobile Landscapes

Inspired by the literary pilgrimages made by Victorians themselves. Authors such as William Hughes and Frederick Kitton wrote enthusiastic accounts of their adventures.

Great Expectations: a Curated Walk

Starts with Pip’s fateful encounter with Magwitch in the local churchyard. But what other secrets is he keeping? Meet the characters who shape his destiny.

David Copperfield: a Curated Walk

Takes David through Kent and down the Dover Road to find answers to some vital questions. How do others see us? What does it mean to be in love?

Dickens and Broadstairs

‘Half awake and half asleep, this idle morning in our sunny window on the edge of a chalk-cliff in the old-fashioned Watering-Place to which we are a faithful resorter..’

Dickens and Dover

Although he stayed in Dover on a number of occasions on his way to the continent, Dickens was not the town’s biggest fan, believing it to be ‘too bandy (I mean musically, no reference to its legs), and infinitely too genteel.’

Dickens and Medway

“Mudbank, mist, swamp … swamp, mist, and mudbank.”’ So says a convict in Great Expectations), describing the ‘marsh country’ in which Pip and Estella have grown up.

Edwin Drood: a Curated Walk

Rochester is proud to celebrate its Dickensian connections, and the most fascinating and intriguing connection is its inspiration for the fictional town of Cloisterham.

Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities and France

Kent acted as a conduit for Dickens’s many visits to France with the Dover Mail and its perilous journey described in several of his novels.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

Charles Dickens’s first serial novel, The Pickwick Papers is preoccupied with Kentish geographies almost as much as it is with scenes of London life.

Ellen woz here

Ellen as a resident of Rochester, opens up a new set of possible interpretations for the novels Dickens wrote during their relationship – Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Dickens and the Staplehurst Rail Crash

On 9 June 1865 Dickens was travelling back from France with Ellen Ternan and her mother. They had joined the tidal train from Folkestone to Charing Cross.

Dickens and Friends

Gad’s Hill caught the imagination of writers from Dickens’s friend and biographer John Forster to controversial journalist and novelist Eliza Lynn Linton.

The Comports of Cooling

My first encounter with Great Expectations was as an eleven year old, watching the 1946 David Lean film in a school hall.

Leather and dust

David Copperfield’s curated walk can tell us much about the route he follows from London - so far David’s account is painstakingly accurate.