Blindness, Prick Writing, and Canonical Waste Paper: Reimagining Dickens in Harriet and Letitia

This contribution to the forum discusses Dickens’s representations and use of embossed systems of print for readers who were blind or visually impaired, explains the controversy surrounding the choice of system for such readers, and examines the disability rights issues involved in the debate. Noting the personal stake that Dickens had in the matter, the article outlines my own response to his position - in the fictional portrait of Harriet Dickens, the novelist’s blind sister-in-law, in Harriet and Letitia, my novel-in-progress. My work suggests how one of Dickens’s female dependents might have contested his power and control: by using a typograph to write over - or, rather, through - his own manuscripts and publications, transforming text into subtext and challenging his gendered concept of disabled expression.