This event has finished
Extra/Ordinary Women
A Charles Dickens Museum exhibition on the real women who supported and inspired Dickens, and how they shaped his fiction.
- Dates
- 11 February – 6 September 2026
- Where
- Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LX
- Type
- Exhibition
- Organiser
- Charles Dickens Museum
Extra/Ordinary Women was a special exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum in Bloomsbury, open from 11 February to 6 September 2026. It looked at the women who supported, influenced and inspired Dickens, and at the clues that link several of them to characters in his novels.
Highlights included a portrait of his daughters Katey and Mamie shown for the first time, and Catherine Dickens's cookbook, a reminder that she was a published author in her own right. There was also a draft preface to an 1857 manual on educating working-class children, written by the philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts and edited by Dickens, and items that belonged to Ellen Ternan.
The exhibition set these lives against the long-running criticism that Dickens's female characters reinforced Victorian ideals of womanhood, and was included with museum admission to his former London home.
Organised by Charles Dickens Museum. Tingle Press lists it as an event worth your time and is not the organiser. Check the organiser's website for final details.