The Charles Dickens Letters Project

Leon is Reader in Victorian Studies at the Queen's University of Belfast, in Northern Ireland. He has been a Dickens Letters Editor since 2003, and is an acknowledged authority on Dickens's handwriting and manuscripts. He regularly serves as a consultant for auction houses, museums and booksellers, and is the author of many publications on Dickens, focussing primarily on manuscripts, letters, painting, photography, and the historical and cultural contexts surrounding Dickens's life and work. His Reading Dickens Differently, was published by Wiley Blackwell in 2020. In 2025 two he published the critical edition of Our Mutual Friend in the Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens series, and the 2nd edition of Wiley-Blackwell's Companion to Charles Dickens.