Robert Giddings introduces and analyses Dickens' major works and explores, especially, his use of audience feedback in his creative processes. Dickens' childhood experiences and his treatment of women in his fiction are analysed, as well as his social critique of a society increasingly de-humanised by materialsim and greed.

The purpose of this series is to promote the study of writing in the English language through the introduction of the major figures writing in English throughout the ages. The books provide an analytical and historical framework for understanding their subjects. Robert Gidding's sociological approach to Smollett re-illuminates a Scottish novelist who has received scant regard from critics. In this study he demonstrates how Smollett became one of the first of Great Britain's writers to earn a living from his pen, and how he was a major novelist in his own right and an important influence on Dickens.

The classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama 60 years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of color, and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales. This book traces these developments and analzes the genre's response to social, economic, technical, and cultural changes, which have re-shaped it into the form we recognize today. The book contains considerable interview material with performers and media professionals.

This collection of essays is concerned with the impact of the experience of empire upon the literary imagination as far as Ireland, Africa and India are concerned. These essays examine the manner in which British imperial experience has been expressed in literature. The contributors discuss Conrad, Forster, Ballantyne, Rushdie, Lawrence of Arabia, Anglo-Irish writers, and such popular classics as 'The Four Feathers'. There is a select bibliography to encourage further reading.

The book takes as its theme the relationship between literature and the contemporary means of production and distribution collectively termed 'the media' - in particular, film and television. The intention of the book is to explore and evaluate the mutual opportunities and restrictions in this relationship. In the grammar of our culture there seems to be an accepted opinion that print is superior in terms of cultural production to film, radio or television, that to read a book is somehow a 'higher' cultural activity than seeing a play on television or seeing a film. By the same token, a novel is a 'superior' work of art to film or television. The longer perspective reveals that traditionally there always is a greater respect paid to the previous mode of literary production - poetry was superior to drama, poetic drama was superior to the novel, and film attained cult and classic status initially over television.

This book critically examines the long established tradition of adapting classic novels to film or TV screen.. An emerging area of interest - the relationship between film and literature and the way cinema and television have translated classic novels into moving pictures from the 30s to the 90s.. A wide-ranging but focused collection that is bang up to date and free of media jargon that looks at both the film and the book.. Includes discussion of: The English Patient, Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch, Pickwick Papers, Dracula, Dickens, Conrad, Hardy and Waugh. -- .

The classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama sixty years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of colour and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales. This richly detailed book traces these developments and analyses the genre's response to social, economic, technical and cultural changes, which have re-shaped it into the form we recognise today. The book contains considerable interview material with performers and media professionals.

The classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama sixty years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of colour and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales. This richly detailed book traces these developments and analyses the genre's response to social, economic, technical and cultural changes, which have re-shaped it into the form we recognise today. The book contains considerable interview material with performers and media professionals.

This collection of essays analyses the effects of changing technology and the attendant commercial pressures on literary styles and subject matter. Authors covered include Charles Dickens, Tobias George Smollett, Mark Twain, Dr Johnson and John le Carre.