Katy Jackson: Why Care About Cutlery?

In this podcast Katy Jackson examines the weird and wonderful world of nineteenth-century cutlery, and discusses why these important objects are so commonly overlooked today. Making use of the CLiC Dickens Project, produced by the University of Birmingham, Katy Jackson demonstrates that in novels of this period it is predominately male characters who show extreme anxiety over their knives, forks, and spoons. Looking at sources as diverse as The Pickwick Papers and Victorian carving manuals, it is possible to unpick cultural attitudes and find that cutlery can teach us more about the public imagination than you might expect...