In biblioteca 2016: dire no alla violenza

Children of the nineteenth century: Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens

This year the Regione Toscana’s annual month-long
celebration of reading takes its inspiration from Karl Popper’s dictum, ‘Civilisation essentially consists in reducing violence’.
Libraries are places of citizenship and civilisation and can work to discourage violence.
We have decided to take this as an opportunity to look back at the work of two nineteenth-century British writers, the researcher Henry Mayhew and the novelist Charles Dickens.
Both, in their separate ways, unambiguosly criticised the violence of contemporary society, in particular the treatment of the poor and of children.

The exhibition will be open from 3 to 28 October at the Harold Acton Library, lungarno Guicciardini 9 (10am-6.30pm). Free entrance.