One of the Authors featured in Literary Norfolk
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
'To hear the wind getting up at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment'.
A brief visit (two days) and a long walk (23 miles from Yarmouth to Lowestoft and back) in January 1849 planted the seeds for Dickens' 'favourite child' - David Copperfield (1850). The eerie flatness of a landscape Dickens calls 'the strangest place in the wide world' made a lasting impression and the novelist expertly contrasts the isolation of the surrounding countryside with the bustle of Yarmouth's thriving port. For David Copperfield, warm and dry in the Peggottys' boathouse on the seashore, Yarmouth is a safe haven and prints an indelible impression on his young mind.
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