The Cambridge Introduction to Charles DickensCharles Dickens became immensely popular early on in his career as a novelist, and his appeal continues to grow with new editions prompted by recent television and film adaptations, as well as large numbers of students studying the Victorian novel. This lively and accessible introduction to Dickens focuses on the extraordinary diversity of his writing. Jon Mee discusses Dickens's novels, journalism and public performances, the historical contexts and his influence on other writers. In the process, five major themes emerge: Dickens the entertainer; Dickens and language; Dickens and London; Dickens, gender, and domesticity; and the question of adaptation, including Dickens's adaptations of his own work. These interrelated concerns allow readers to start making their own new connections between his famous and less widely read works and to appreciate fully the sheer imaginative richness of his writing, which particularly evokes the dizzying expansion of nineteenth-century London. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Chapter 2 Dickens and language | 20 |
Chapter 3 Dickens and the city | 43 |
Chapter 4 Dickens gender and domesticity | 64 |
Chapter 5 Adapting Dickens | 84 |
Dickenss world | 99 |
Notes | 101 |
| 107 | |
| 112 | |
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adaptations aristocratic aspects Barnaby Rudge Bleak House chapter characters Charles Dickens cinema Collins comic crowd David Copperfield death described Dickensian Dombey Dombey and Son domestic early edith eliot entertainment estella esther eugene Expectations eyes face Fagin father feeling fiction film final Florence Forster free indirect speech grinding haunted heart human idea imagination instance introduction and notes John Harmon Joyce’s kind language later novels literary Little Dorrit living Lizzie London look Magwitch Martin Chuzzlewit metaphor murder Mutual Friend mystery nancy narrative voice narrator nature never nineteenth-century Old Curiosity Old Curiosity Shop Oliver Twist oxford performances perhaps Pickwick Papers Pip’s point of view popular prison public readings published reader relationship scene seems sense serialized Sikes Sketches by Boz society stain story streets struggle Tale theatre things tion turned Venus Venus’s Victorian visual Wegg Wilkie Collins woman women word