San Antonio College Library

"This wide-ranging book examines the writings of Dickens, not only in his time but also in ours. It looks at the author as a Victorian 'man of letters', and explores his cultural and critical impact both on the definition of the novel in the nineteenth century and the subsequent development of the form in the twentieth. Lyn Pykett focuses on Dickens as journalist, literary entrepreneur, the conductor of magazines, the shaper of the serial novel, the...

The Victorian age if often portrayed as an era of repressive social mores. Yet this simplified view ignores the context of Great Britain's profound shift, through rapid industrialization, from rural to metropolitan life during this time. Throughout his career, Charles Dickens addressed the numerous changes occurring in Victorian society. His portrayals of organized religion, class distinction, worker's rights, prison reform and rampant poverty resonated...

"This book is about Charles Dickens: about the things he teaches us in his novels, particulary in David Copperfield. The first five chapters of this book are devoted to David Copperfield ... The last four chapters are on Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood ..." preface.

Includes criticism of these novels of Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist; Martin Chuzzlewit; Dombey and son; David Copperfield; Bleak house; Little Dorrit; Great expectations; and Our mutual friend.

Becoming Dickens tells the story of how an ambitious young Londoner became England's greatest novelist. In following the twists and turns of Charles Dickens's early career, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst examines a remarkable double transformation: in reinventing himself Dickens reinvented the form of the novel. It was a high-stakes gamble, and Dickens never forgot how differently things could have turned out. From his traumatized childhood to the suicide...

First published in 1984, this title examines the development of a special rhetoric in Dickens' work, which, by using grotesque effects, challenged the complacency of his middle-class Victorian readers. The study begins by exploring definitions of the grotesque and moves on to look at three key aspects that particularly impacted on Dickens' imagination: popular theatre (especially pantomime), caricature, and the tradition of the Gothic novel. Michael...

"'Bah! Humbug!' and 'God bless us, every one!' are phrases that have resounded through the years, instantly recognizable as exclamations from Scrooge and Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens's beloved Christmas Carol. Told and retold to generations of children and adults, A Christmas Carol has been adapted, revised, condensed, added to, and modernized more than any other work in English literature. In this engaging and delightfully illustrated book, Paul Davis...