Lucinda Hawksley - Career

Career

Originally Hawksley intended to be a teacher and to write children’s books during the school holidays. However, after two years of teaching practice in inner London primary schools she decided instead to be a book editor, writing books in her spare time. She took an MA in Literature and the History of Art and organised and curated an exhibition of the paintings of her relative Kate Dickens-Perugini in 2002 at the Charles Dickens Museum in London.

She has written or co-written 14 non-fiction books including the 19th and early 20th-century sections of 'The Essential History of Art' (2000) and 'An Encyclopedia of British History' (2001). Hawksley's 'Essential Pre-Raphaelites' (1999) has become a best seller and led to an invitation to lecture on 'Pre-Raphaelite Artists: The Connection Between Their Lives and Work' at the Oxford Union. As a speaker and lecturer she has spoken at the International Charles Dickens Conference, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the University of Genoa, the Kensington Hilton in London, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Chicago Dickens Holiday Festival.

In December 2007 she appeared as herself in the BBC docudrama Charles Dickens & the Invention of Christmas, written and presented by Griff Rhys Jones. She also appeared in Channel 4's 2008 documentary Dickens's Secret Lover, which was concerned with Dickens's relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan. In December 2011 she appeared on BBC One's Songs of Praise and for BBC Two in Mrs Dickens' Family Christmas, during which she was interviewed by Sue Perkins. In January 2013 she appeared in an episode of BBC Two's Queen Victoria's Children and in an episode of Find My Past which was concerned with the affair between Charles Dickens and Ellen Ternan.

Hawksley is the cousin of actor Harry Lloyd and actor and performer Gerald Dickens. She is a Patron of the Charles Dickens Museum and lives in London.