Historydraft LogoHistorydraft Logo
Historydraft
beta
Historydraft Logo
Historydraft
beta

  • Norfolk, England, United Kingdom
    Sunday Jan 7, 1849
    David Copperfield

    A Visit to two Cities

    Norfolk, England, United Kingdom
    Sunday Jan 7, 1849

    On 7 January 1849, Dickens visited Norwich and Yarmouth in Norfolk, with two close friends, John Leech (1817–1864) and Mark Lemon (1809–1870). Leech was an illustrator at Punch, a satirical magazine, and the first illustrator for A Christmas Carol by Dickens in 1843. Lemon was a founding editor of Punch, and soon a contributor to Household Words, the weekly magazine Dickens was starting up; he co-authored Mr Nightingale's Diary, a farce, with Dickens in 1851. The two towns, especially the second, became important in the novel, and Dickens informed Forster that Yarmouth seemed to him to be "the strangest place in the world" and that he would "certainly try my hand at it". During a walk in the vicinity of Yarmouth, Dickens noticed a sign indicating the small locality of Blunderston, which became in his novel the village of "Blunderstone" where David is born and spends his childhood.




  • Yarmouth, England, United Kingdom
    Sunday Jan 14, 1849
    David Copperfield

    Henry Fielding Dickens

    Yarmouth, England, United Kingdom
    Sunday Jan 14, 1849

    A week after Charles's arrival in Yarmouth, his sixth son, Henry Fielding Dickens, was named after Henry Fielding, his favorite past author. Per Forster, Dickens refers to Fielding "as a kind of homage to the novel he was about to write".




  • U.S.
    Tuesday Jan 23, 1849
    Elizabeth Blackwell

    Blackwell became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the United States

    U.S.
    Tuesday Jan 23, 1849

    On January 23, 1849, Blackwell became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the United States.




<