ABSTRACT

Dickens crossed the Channel many times. From letters, biographies and chronologies, I arrive at a figure of 60 crossings (30 return journeys), the first in 1837 and the last in 1868,1 but there may well have been more: in particular, as Claire Tomalin suggests, Dickens may have made additional, furtive cross-Channel visits to Ellen Teman (if indeed France is where she was) between 1862 and 1865.2 So, crossing the Channel was clearly one of the most familiar and characteristic travel experiences of Dickens's life. Perhaps because of this familiarity, the crossing does not figure largely in the novels - not even in A Tale of Two Cities - but, together with the topography and culture of the ports and resorts of either shore, it keeps reappearing as a fruitful theme in the quasi-autobiographical, quasi-fictional space of D ickens's journalism , and as a colourful point of reference in his letters.