"A collection of primary and secondary Dickens material to support study, teaching, and research. At its core is the J. F. Dexter collection, which was created by John Furber Dexter, the first and greatest collector of early Dickens editions and Dickensiana. Purchased by The British Library in 1969, ... [it is reproduced almost in its entirety in microfilm], supplemented by a considerable body of other material."--Intro.

Palgrave Advances in Charles Dickens Studies is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the study of one of the most important Victorian novelists. Its editors, Robert L. Patten and John Bowen, are leading authorities on Dickens and the international team of contributors they have assembled contains some of the most exciting critics of nineteenth-century fiction writing today. The book covers the whole range of Dickens's writing and criticism about it, including biographical, theoretical and historical approaches. It is based on up-to-the-minute research and written in a lively and engaging way, and will be essential reading for all students and scholars of this canonical writer.

A collection of the three best Charles Dickens novels: A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist. Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Charles Dickens, a man so representative of his age as to have become considered synonymous with it, demands to be read in context. This book illuminates the worlds - social, political, economic and artistic - in which Dickens worked. Dickens's professional life encompassed work as a novelist, journalist, editor, public reader and passionate advocate of social reform. This volume offers a detailed treatment of Dickens in each of these roles, exploring the central features of Dickens's age, work and legacy, and uncovering sometimes surprising faces of the man and of the range of Dickens industries. Through 45 digestible short chapters written by a leading expert on each topic, a rounded picture emerges of Dickens's engagement with his time, the influence of his works and the ways he has been read, adapted and re-imagined from the nineteenth century to the present.

A Companion to Charles Dickens concentrates on the historical, ideological, and social forces that defined Dickens’s world. Puts Dickens’s work into its literary, historical, and social contexts Traces the development of Dickens’s career as a journalist and novelist Includes original essays by leading Dickensian scholars on each of Dickens’s fifteen novels Explores a broad range of topics, including criticisms of his novels, the use of history and law in his fiction, language, and the effect of political and social reform Examines Dickens's legacy and surveys the mass of secondary materials that has been generated in response and reverence to his writing

Struggling to support her family in mid-19th-century New York, writer Frances Osgood makes an unexpected connection with literary master Edgar Allan Poe and finds her survival complicated by her intense attraction to the writer and the scheming manipulations of his wife.

A lush historical novel set in Victorian England, When It Rained at Hembry Castle is the story of an aristocratic family, secrets that dare not be told, and the wonder of falling in love. When the 8th Earl of Staton dies, his eldest son, the unreliable Richard, inherits the title and the family’s home—Hembry Castle. The Earl’s niece, the American-born Daphne, is intrigued by Edward Ellis, a rising author with a first-hand knowledge of Hembry Castle—from the servants’ hall. Can Richard come to terms with his title before bringing ruin on his family? Will Edward and Daphne find their way to each other despite the obstacles of life at Hembry Castle? When It Rained at Hembry Castle is a page-turning, romantic novel with vivid characters and an engrossing story that will keep you guessing until the end.

THE ACCLAIMED DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF ONE OF THE GREATEST BRITISH WRITERS OF ALL TIME Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a journalist, a father of ten, a supporter of liberal social causes, but most of all, a great novelist. From unpromising beginnings sent to work a black factory age twelve, he rose to such social and literary heights that when he died, the world mourned. Yet the brilliance concealed a divided character: a republican, he disliked America; sentimental about the family, he took up with a young actress; usually generous, he cut off his impecunious children. From the award-winning author Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius. If you loved Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, this book is invaluable reading. 'By far the most humane and imaginatively sympathetic account yet for the general reader' Amanda Craig, New Statesman

The Uncommercial Traveller is a remarkable display of creative journalism from Dickens's final decade, balancing Sketches by Boz at the beginning of his career. The 37 short papers, which first appeared in his weekly journal All The Year Round, offer sensitive and penetrating perspectives on London, Britain, and France in the 1860s. In the company of the Traveller, readers undertake a series of journeys. We visit the scene of a disastrous shipwreck on Anglesey, the docklands at Liverpool, and the Chatham dockyard. We accompany the Traveller as he returns to the scene of his early childhood in 'Dullborough'. We cross the Channel in atrocious conditions, and we explore 'the French-Flemish country'. Twice, we join the local crowds for the gruesome entertainment offered by the Paris morgue. Nearer to Dickens's Covent Garden base we attend a popular theatre for a performance and a Sunday sermon. We visit a children's hospital, a lead factory, and a naval school. We tramp the city by night. We have repeated problems with restaurants. We hear weird stories, meet odd characters, and much more. Full of humour, sentiment, quirkiness; supremely assured in their command of style; astonishingly varied: these papers take a worthy place alongside the Dickens's late fictional masterpieces Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. This is the first fully critical edition of The Uncommercial Traveller, based on detailed study of the surviving densely worked manuscripts and the early printed texts. The edition includes a full analytical essay, textual notes, and detailed explanatory notes, as well as a glossary of unusual terms and words used in senses likely to be unfamiliar to modern readers.