Published to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, this book celebrates the greatest of English novelists by illustrating some of his abiding preoccupations. Prompted by quotations from the novels and other writings, each themed chapter explores contemporary images relating to salient topics of the Victorian age such as the public entertainments of London and the domestic pastimes of its inhabitants; the coming of the railways (which were to transform Victorian England in fiction and in fact); school life for children, and conditions in the workhouses and prisons which loom so large in many of the novels and which blighted Dickens's own childhood. Dickens was an incorrigible showman, and this book also explores his role as actor-manager of theatrical productions, as originator of the myriad stage adaptations of his books, and as supreme interpreter of them himself in the public readings which came to dominate his later years. Reproducing key extracts from the novels alongside a selection of the original covers as they appeared weekly and monthly in the bookshops, their crucial illustrations and all the paraphernalia of nineteenth-century advertising, is a unique approach which breathes life into the vibrant world of Dickens and his characters.

There was certainly a collection of books at Lincoln Cathedral in the twelfth century, and its origins were perhaps earlier still; but little interest seems to have been taken in building up the library until the second half of the seventeenth century, with the appointment in 1660 of the bibliophile Michael Honywood, a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, as Dean. The present Wren Library's collection of some 8,000 printed books is based largely on his private library, bequeathed to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln on his death in 1681. Much of Honywood's library was put together during seventeen years of voluntary exile in the Low Countries from 1643. It is consequently rich in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century continental literature, including rare Italian plays, European pamphlets and broadsides interpreting the English political situation, a collection of Dutch ballads, and many religious books and tracts. The splendid English collection includes 1600 STC items, and 2,650 printed between 1641 and 1700, over 100 of which are not recorded in Wing. In addition there are some 100 incunables. This complete catalogue of books printed before 1801 is the first since 1859, and offers the detail and precision required by modern scholars, bibliographers and libraries. Titles are given at some length to indicate subject coverage, and format, pagination, and details of illustrations are recorded. The catalogue notes which books belonged to Honywood, whose importance as a collector is thus established. A set of concordances keyed to the main entries covers STC, Wing, Adams, and Goff.

Written at a time of social unrest in Victorian Britain and set in London at the time of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots, Dickens's brooding novel of mayhem and murder in the eighteenth century explores the relationship between repression and liberation in private and public life. Barnaby Rudge tells a story of individuals caught up in the mindless violence of the mob. Lord George Gordon's dangerous appeal to old religious prejudices is interwoven with the murder mystery surrounding the father of the simple-minded Barnaby. The discovery of the murderer and his involvement in the riots put Barnaby's life in jeopardy. Culminating in the terrifying destruction of Newgate prison by the rampaging hordes, the brilliant descriptions of the riots are among Dickens's most powerful. Barnaby Rudge looks forward to the dark complexities of Dickens's later novels, whose characters also seek refuge from a chaotic and unstable world. This edition includes all the original illustrations, plus an illuminating Introduction and notes.
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